Criminal Justice: Transgender People
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Faulks
Our prison officers face a great many challenges and they perform their duties with admirable resolve and skill in often challenging circumstances. They have duties to all prisoners but particular duties to those who may be undergoing gender recognition. They are particularly aware of those challenges and will treat those prisoners with appropriate sensitivity.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My noble friend Lord Patel raised an important issue about overcrowding in prisons. Under those circumstances, the sensitive consideration of to which prison a prisoner is to be allocated is made much more difficult simply because there are not enough vacant prison places for the allocation to take place.
Lord Faulks
In deciding on the appropriate allocation, there must sometimes be a period of hiatus. Where it is unclear what physical and anatomical risks an individual may present in their contact with other prisoners, they are often held in a secure environment away from other prisoners while their circumstances are clarified, so that a considered decision may be made after advice has been received from appropriate professionals.
Prisons: Young People
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey
To move that this House takes note of the case for taking action to address the problems of young people before they enter the criminal justice system in order to reduce the prison population, improve conditions within prison, and focus on the rehabilitation of prisoners, as set out in The Harris Review: Changing Prisons, Saving Lives.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to introduce this debate. I should make it clear that this is not out of any sense of self-promotion, but because I believe that the issues raised by the independent review that I led are so important. Indeed, I believe that they are important for the Government, because as they wrestle with the comprehensive spending review, they need to recognise that prison is a hugely expensive intervention and yet the benefits of this spend are questionable. It has a relatively low impact on crime, and indeed rates of reoffending are high, particularly among young adults.
Last year, I and my team were commissioned by the then Minister for Prisons to review the 83 self-inflicted deaths of young people in prison from April 2007 to the end of 2013. We also looked at the deaths of the four under-18s who died in the same period. Uppermost in our minds throughout the exercise was that every single one of the young people who died and whose cases we examined was someone’s son or daughter, sister or brother, partner or even parent. Each of the deaths represents a failure by the state to protect the young people concerned, which is a breach of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is a failure by the state which is all the greater because the same criticisms occur time and time again. Lessons have not been learned and not enough has been done over the years to bring about substantive change.
We considered an enormous volume of evidence that included submissions from 54 organisations and individuals. We conducted 26 hearings and consulted senior experts through a series of meetings and seminars. We visited prisons and young offender institutions, spending time at each one listening to the views of young prisoners themselves. The excellent charity INQUEST, which does so much valuable work supporting people who have had a loved one die in the custody of the state, helpfully organised for us two listening days with the families of those who had died. We surveyed young adults in institutions and received 50 audio submissions from prisoners following broadcasts that I made on National Prison Radio. Then there was the detailed examination of the 87 cases themselves.
Our conclusion was that all young adults in custody are vulnerable. Some had led chaotic lives and had complex histories, while others had been subjected to child abuse, or had been exposed to violence or repeated bereavement. Many had been in foster or residential care, and often their problems had been further compounded by mental health issues. In the 87 cases we examined, many of the young people’s problems and vulnerabilities, including their mental health issues, had been evident from an early age. Why did so many of them end up in custody?
Billy Spiller was 21 when he died in prison in November 2011. His mother said:
“Throughout Billy’s life I tried to get proper care and support for him but all the doors were shut in my face. From the moment he was sentenced to imprisonment, I knew that they wouldn’t be able to look after him. They should have diverted him from the courts or made sure that everybody in the prison had training to deal with him”.
The same mistakes have been repeated time and time again. Nicholas Saunders was 18 when he died in April 2011. The pre-sentence review had recommended a community disposal but the judge decided that prison was the best option for him. The documents describing his vulnerability and a previous suicide attempt were not transferred with him when he was moved from HMP Woodhill to HMYOI Stoke Heath, where six weeks after the transfer he was found hanging in his cell from a ligature attached to a light fitting—despite a similar suicide, also from a light fitting, at the same establishment just a few years earlier.
In an earlier case, Joseph Scholes was 16 when he died in 2002. He had a long history of vulnerability, repeatedly told staff he would kill himself, and was never seen by a psychiatrist. When he did make a noose from a bed-sheet and hang himself from the bars of his cell, he left a message for his mother and father telling them he could not cope and that:
“I tried telling them and they just don’t fucking listen”.
We have heard the same stories time and time again over the past 13 years, and the cases do not stop coming. There were 69 self-inflicted deaths in the first nine months of this year alone, and 12 of those were of young people under the age of 24.
There are no simple and easy solutions to such deaths, but the weight of evidence shows the need to look broadly at the reasons for the deaths and how they might have been prevented by much earlier intervention. Our conclusion was that there must be a commitment to support vulnerable young people before and after their contact with the criminal justice system, and the objective of policy must be to assist them to become productive citizens.
I am pleased, therefore, at the hints that have been dropped by the Secretary of State for Justice that this is the direction of travel that he wants to follow, but on Monday our review will have been with the Ministry of Justice for seven months, and even now there is still no sign of the Government’s response. Last week, the grandly titled Ministerial Board on Deaths in Custody met, but apparently it did not have the time to discuss the review at that meeting. Indeed, the review has yet to be presented to it, let alone considered. I know that the review raises some difficult issues and I know that the National Offender Management Service is extremely defensive about some of its findings, but if the Government do not act decisively, the distressing cases we considered will be repeated and more young lives will be wasted.
Indeed, there is already evidence of backwards movement. NOMS has been reviewing the ACCT process—the existing arrangements for addressing the needs of those considered to be at risk of self-inflicted death. The NOMS conclusion, I am told, is that these arrangements are overused and that it should be easier to take a prisoner off the process. Presumably this is intended to save money, but it runs directly against the research that was done for us on the clinical reviews of those who had died, which found that in many cases the young people had been taken off the ACCT process prematurely or inappropriately.
Let us be clear: prisons and young offender institutions are grim environments, bleak and demoralising to the spirit. The experience of living in a prison or a young offender institution is not conducive to rehabilitation. What is more, when this is coupled with the current impoverished regimes caused by staff shortages—a situation that can only get worse with the likely budget cuts that the Chancellor will impose in a month’s time—it makes the experience particularly damaging to developing young adults who are in those institutions.
It was clear to us also that young adults in prison are not sufficiently engaged in purposeful activity and that their time is not spent in a constructive and valuable way. Indeed, the current restricted regimes that we observed—again because of staff shortages—do not even allow for the delivery of planned core day activities that might help rehabilitation. We came across repeated examples of medical and mental health appointments being missed because there were insufficient staff to escort the patient—the prisoner—from their cell to the medical practitioner.
There needs to be a fundamental shift in the philosophy of prison. We recommended a new statement on the purpose of prison: its primary purpose should be rehabilitation, along with keeping prisoners and the public safe and secure. This will require leadership and that must start with Ministers.
Leadership in individual establishments is also critical. In some prisons, the governors have a positive vision of what they are trying to do, and that feeds through the culture of the entire prison. In others, the governors say all the right things, but they are not borne out by what you see as you go round the prison. As young prisoners said to us on at least one occasion, “It’s all different when the governor is on the wing”. And there are some prisons where the governors are completely overwhelmed by the administrative and managerial challenges that they face, so that concern for the welfare of individual prisoners seems to have been crowded out.
There is a disconnect between what those in charge think should be happening and what actually goes on in individual prisons. NOMS Prison Service instructions are by and large sound and, if implemented, would deliver good practice, but there is a yawning chasm between what they contain and what happens in practice. There are also some ominous gaps. In many of the 87 cases examined, the vulnerable young adults were going through a period of particular distress that might have passed if they had not been spending so much time locked inside their cells with nothing to do other than stare at potential ligature attachment points. But NOMS centrally does not know how many functional safer cells—those where ligature attachment points have been by and large removed—exist in individual establishments because it does not collect the data. Nor does NOMS know—again, because it does not collect the data—how many hours prisoners spend out of their cells on purposeful activity. There are other omissions. Frankly, we found it surprising that NOMS does not have a discrete policy on bullying or on the management of gangs.
So there are issues of leadership and issues of policy, but then there is the question of who takes responsibility for the individual prisoner and her or his journey through the prison. A central recommendation of our review was that the prison workforce needs to be trained and developed to a higher professional standard. There should be a new role: we called it the custody and rehabilitation officer, who would take personal responsibility for the health, education, social care, safety and rehabilitation needs of each individual prisoner. These officers would be suitably trained professionals with a small enough caseload—we were thinking 15 to 20—that they would know the individual prisoners well, would deliver the right package of services to assess their needs and deliver their support and rehabilitation.
Our central message was that much more needs to be done to support young adults not only after they come into contact with the criminal justice system but before they ever get into trouble. I repeat: these are young people whose problems have been evident from an early age, so why was nothing done long before they ended up in custody?
We looked at the work of the Government’s troubled families programme, which concentrates the efforts of all public agencies to resolve the problems of families whose problems, if left unresolved, are a drain on the state’s resources. Why is it not possible to adopt a similar approach to the needs of troubled adolescents? Reinvestment and redirection of resources to the health and welfare system to resolve the issues creating problems for the troubled child or adolescent before they ever enter the criminal justice system, or investment in effective alternatives to custody if they do get into trouble, will be money well spent and will reduce the numbers in prison so as to enable better support and rehabilitative efforts for those who do become prisoners.
Delaying action until the resource position is easier is not an option. It would mean young people continuing to die unnecessarily in our prisons and we will continue to waste countless millions of pounds on failing to rehabilitate those who could be rehabilitated, locking up those for whom a non-prison option would be more appropriate, and failing to intervene early enough to prevent people entering the criminal justice system in the first place. Our proposals were rooted in the impressive body of evidence we received and considered.
We recognise that they involve substantial changes and a significant shift in approach, but they are changes that are urgently needed if the waste of resource that is our present penal policy is to be stemmed and if—even more importantly—the tragic preventable loss of young lives is to be halted. Those who ignore the lessons of past failure are condemned to repeat them. That will be the fate of policymakers who fail to act on these recommendations. The 87 tragic cases considered by our review deserve as their memorial that this time it must be different. We owe them no less. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. It has been a very important and thorough debate, and I am grateful to everyone. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, put it very usefully when he said that the Government need no more evidence, and I listened with interest to the long list of reviews that the Secretary of State has commissioned. All of those will no doubt have to be considered before a final decision can be taken on these matters.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, highlighted the importance of defining the purpose of prisons—a matter which was also set out clearly by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers—and highlighted the importance of recognising that the sentence of the court is the deprivation of liberty and we must now focus on ensuring that prisons deliver what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, talked about: a chance to change in prison.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, also highlighted the importance of individual care and attention. That was also articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and my noble friend Lord Beecham, both of whom endorsed, I think, the principle of the custody and rehabilitation officer and a more professional approach to these matters.
My noble friend Lord Bradley talked about the importance of effective information sharing, a theme which was picked up by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Adebowale and Lord McNally. My noble friend also highlighted the importance of liaison and diversion. That point was picked up by my noble friend Lady Healy of Primrose Hill. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth rightly spoke about the importance of maturity and brain development, a point which came across in so much of the evidence we received. It has got to underpin so many different aspects of government policy. The noble Lord, Lord Fellowes, reminded us of the importance of the physical condition of the prison estate. I know that it is a matter that the Secretary of State has considered.
My noble friend Lord Judd spoke movingly about the fear that some prisoners have about leaving prison and highlighted the need to rehabilitate—a theme which I hope the Secretary of State will also pick up. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, rightly focused on issues of race, religion and gender. Those must underpin our work in this area. I was interested in the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Beecham about a greater role for local government and, in particular, for combined authorities in the oversight of the criminal justice system and prisons. I hope it will be possible to take that forward.
I conclude by thanking the Minister for responding so thoroughly to many of the issues without actually telling us anything about the final direction of travel. He told us—and I would have been shocked if he had said the opposite—that the recommendations of my review are being considered with the utmost care. It would indeed be shocking if the Ministry of Justice, having commissioned this report, was not considering it with the utmost care. The Minister listed a large number of reviews, and they will all, no doubt, have to be considered. He made one point I found puzzling. He said that it is necessary to wait for the appointment of an interim chair of the independent advisory panel. That post has not been advertised and, by its nature, is interim. Surely it would be much better, given that the post has been vacant for a month, to advertise the permanent post. It is surprising that that has not happened.
The Minister said that he wants to see that prisoners have the chance to change in prison. I hope we will also see that the Government are trying to ensure that the young people who are not yet in prison—who have not yet encountered the criminal justice system—have a chance to change before that.
Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Carlile of Berriew (LD)
Can my noble friend elucidate for those Liberal Democrats who are unaccustomed to taking part in plots organised by the Chief Whip of the Liberal Democrats—I claim to be one of them—and answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Reid? Why is this issue not better dealt with by sentencing guidelines, which can be changed from time to time to meet the circumstances that the courts have to face on a regular basis, rather than by using this clumsy statutory provision, which is not in a fit form to enact in any event?
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I have listened to this debate for the last hour and a half and was almost looking forward to the Minister’s response. Some serious issues have been raised during the course of this debate which deserve an answer on behalf of the Government. As I understand the position—and I have got more rather than less confused as the afternoon has worn on—we are about to have put before us the Motion than the clause should stand part of the Bill.
If we were to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Marks, we would presumably vote not content. Presumably, too, the Government and possibly the Opposition have whipped all the noble Lords here to vote content—that we want the clause. Therefore, before we vote on the matter, it is really important that some of the issues that have been raised are addressed by your Lordships’ House with the authority of the Government saying what their responses are.
For example, one point that exercises me is the question of why it is thought that this might have a deterrent effect on young boys who act largely on impulse. I appreciate that the Government do not want—or the Minister does not, on behalf of whatever entity he is speaking—to express a firm view. However, he could share with the House the research work that no doubt different government departments have conducted on what constitutes a deterrent effect on young men and whether the clause, as drafted, conceivably delivers such an effect.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I apologise for prolonging this still further. Following the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, I was grateful to the Minister for his response but the concern about the criminalisation of young people in care is very serious. It is one of the two main agenda items for the new chair of the Youth Justice Board, the noble Lord, Lord McNally. He is very concerned particularly that so many young people from children’s homes enter the criminal justice system. It would be helpful as background to the Bill to have some warning as to what if any impact this clause, if accepted, would have on the number of young people from care coming into custody.
Digital Bill of Rights
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Faulks
The Government are certainly trying to protect children from access to parts of the internet to which it would be most ill advised for them to have access. We are trying to promote by a number of means responsible use of the internet but, once again, my answer is that, for the moment, we ought to hesitate before using legislation to do this. However, I entirely accept what the noble Baroness says about the importance of responsible access.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
The Minister talks about the importance of protecting children, but do not all consumers need protection on the internet? While it may not be appropriate to legislate, would it not be appropriate for the Government to put their weight behind requiring that there is a robust system of identity assurance so that you know who you are dealing with on the internet and a robust system of age assurance so that only people of an appropriate age can access material that is appropriate for that particular age group? The Government’s weight would surely be helpful in making sure that that was delivered by contractors.
Lord Faulks
The noble Lord is right in that the Government should, and indeed do, work with internet industries to improve—or in some cases to limit—access. An example of that is what they have been doing with children’s access online. The Government have a strong track record of working with the internet industries to drive progress, to allow parents to have network-level domestic filtering, parental internet controls and the like, and to ensure the availability of family-friendly public wi-fi in places children are likely to be. Of course, it must be remembered that all individuals have their normal legal rights, wherever the information is contained.
Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I also put my name to this amendment because this is a matter that needs clarification and warrants a bit of debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said, there have been a number of these cases. I read the same article that she quoted, on the 114 cases that the Government had dealt with, with some concern. In August there was the case of a woman from a Sikh background who was married to a man who had mental disabilities. He did not annul the marriage because she pleaded that that would cause her stigma. It seems that the interests of the man—who was the victim in that case—were not taken into full consideration, and that needs to be looked at. If this amendment were agreed, would that mean that these sorts of cases could be declared void because people did not have the capacity to enter into marriage?
There was an article in the Times last week about another case concerning a girl of 14. Could we argue that that girl, who was forced into a marriage at gunpoint in Pakistan, had the capacity to enter into that marriage, given that it was forced? The local authority, which has now taken her and her child into her care,
“applied to the family court to have the marriage declared void”.
However, Mr Justice Holman said that he could not do that. He accepted that the marriage was,
“‘on the balance of probability void’ under English law. However, he said that he was prevented from making a solemn declaration to that effect by a section of the Family Law Act 1986”.
I am not a lawyer but, as I read it, it does not make sense that in these types of forced marriages where people either do not have capacity because they have a mental disability or they are under age, or whatever the reason may be, they find themselves at a disadvantage when they try to get the marriage annulled and voided. We have to consider that loophole, and it must be taken into consideration.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Freedom charity. I apologise to the Committee for not being present for the earlier part of our discussions on these topics due to a commitment at the Department of Health.
This is an important principle. If the Minister is planning to respond by saying that the issue is adequately covered either in the clauses we have before us or elsewhere in legislation, I urge him to think again before giving the Committee that response. It needs to be made absolutely explicit that a forced marriage is not valid where there is any question at all that the person being coerced into marriage and who has entered into it does not have capacity. That capacity may be related to age—elsewhere in our legislation there has been all sorts of discussion about capacity and age, and some of the girls concerned are of a very young age—or it may be related to learning difficulties of various sorts. We therefore need to make it absolutely explicit in the legislation that this is intended to cover those circumstances where the individual concerned does not have capacity.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her amendment. I also thank my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece and the noble Lord for their contributions. The noble Lord alluded to the Freedom charity, which carries out notable work in this field, and I acknowledge his work and engagement in that arena.
Marriage without consent or the capacity to consent is totally unacceptable. Clause 108 specifies that an offence is committed if the perpetrator uses coercion and believes, or ought reasonably to believe, that their conduct may cause another person to enter the marriage without free and full consent. A person who lacks capacity to enter into marriage is incapable of providing free and full consent to marriage. In the cases that have come to the attention of the Forced Marriage Unit, some form of coercion has invariably been involved in forcing a person who lacks capacity to consent to a marriage. The new offences would therefore cover this behaviour.
Although I totally understand the noble Baroness’s concerns and those of other noble Lords, the definition of the new offences in Clause 108 already captures in practice the types of cases intended to be covered by this amendment. I take on board the point that the noble Lord made about looking specifically at this issue. Certainly, between Committee and Report we will look at the issue once again in the context of Clause 108. However, I assure noble Lords that Clause 108 is intended to capture that particular element. Marriage is voidable under Section 12(c) of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 on the grounds that,
“either party to the marriage did not validly consent to it, whether in consequence of duress, mistake, unsoundness of mind or otherwise”.
The issue was also raised of a vulnerable person getting a decree of nullity. The procedure to do so is available and a person can apply for a decree of nullity by filing a petition at any time after the marriage ceremony. If the application is not opposed, there is unlikely to be a court hearing and the person will not have to attend court. Following the petition, the court will issue a decree nisi and, following this, the applicant can apply for a decree absolute. The Family Procedure Rules make provision to ensure that these matters are straightforward for unrepresented applicants. However, having said all that, I fully acknowledge the points made by noble Lords about the special circumstances that they have mentioned. Having explained the scope of Clause 108, I hope that the noble Baroness is minded to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Manzoor (LD)
My Lords, I should start by saying that I am very sorry that I was not able to speak at Second Reading. However, as I am keen to make a contribution, I hope that the Committee will excuse and indulge a new girl. My noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, who has added his name to this amendment, has asked me to apologise for his being out of the country.
My noble friend Lord Lester was, of course, the author of the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007, which has been such a huge success in using the family courts in a sensitive way to address a serious and complicated problem that particularly affects young British Asian girls, women and boys. I pay tribute to him and other noble Lords who have worked so hard on this issue over the years.
Amendment 14 comes from the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Bill. It requires the Secretary of State to report annually on the effectiveness of the criminalisation of forced marriage. This is only right if we are to ensure that the law has been effective and to aid transparency.
Along with the JCHR, I understand the Government’s reasons for criminalising forced marriage but am concerned about whether criminalisation is a step too far and whether this is the most effective method for dealing with this issue. One needs only to look at the case of female genital mutilation to see that criminalisation is not always sufficient. As the JCHR report points out, there has not been a successful prosecution for female genital mutilation in 28 years—although I take my noble friend Lady Hamwee’s point and am not quite sure what that shows. Can the Minister explain why the Government believe that the criminalisation of forced marriage will be different?
It is very important that nothing is done to undermine the effectiveness of the 2007 Act in enabling the victim to apply to the family courts to obtain a forced marriage protection order. I am concerned that if a young child knows that her parents may be criminalised as a result of such protection, she will be alarmed by the involvement of the police and the criminal courts, as well as by the publicity and the dishonour to her family that the stigma of a criminal offence will bring. Invariably, it will affect, in negative ways, not only the victim but other siblings and family members not party to the forced marriage decision. I hope the Minister can assure the Committee that the civil protection route will remain the preferred way forward and that clear guidance will be given to the CPS and the police that everything should be done to use the family courts for civil protection first and that the criminal process will be used only as a last resort.
Even if the Minister can reassure me on both those points—he has already gone a long way in this discussion to show the Government’s commitment—I believe there remains a real need to monitor the effect of criminalisation to ensure that we can evaluate the progress being made. If the Minister is minded to accept my proposal, the annual report should include, for example, the number of cases going to the family court, to allow benchmarking, the age, sex and ethnic origin of the victims, the number of cases sent to the CPS, the number of people convicted, and what financial or other aid has been given to the victim, including accommodation and legal aid to support individuals through the criminal court process. I also look forward to seeing the Government develop these ideas in their response to the JCHR. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain what steps the department will take, if it is unable to accept the proposals in my amendment for an annual report, to ensure that the effect of criminalisation is kept under review so that, if there are unintended consequences, they are identified quickly and can be dealt with.
Finally, I believe that it is important that we also look at other approaches, including working internationally, and do not just focus on criminalising the practice as the only way forward. As the Forced Marriage Unit knows well, victims can be taken to Pakistan, India or Bangladesh and coerced into so-called marriages. They may be victims of rape and bodily injury; if they do not comply, they may be victims of what are disgracefully called honour killings or of forced suicides. Tackling these issues through working with international partners is, in many ways, more important than criminalisation here in the UK, as we already have laws in place in relation to this heinous crime. I hope that the Minister can reassure me that criminalisation will form only part of our approach to tackling forced marriage, and that Ministers will continue to work internationally to put an end to the practice across the world and ensure a more joined-up approach to the criminal justice system in the UK on this issue. I beg to move.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, has put forward an interesting amendment. The principle behind it, that Governments ought to report to Parliament regularly on the effectiveness of pieces of legislation, is one that I am sure that we would all wish to see more widely spread. However, I have a reservation about the terms in which the amendment has been put.
The noble Baroness said that she has reservations over whether criminalisation will have the desired effect. She implied, and I believe that all of your Lordships would agree, that criminalisation is not a panacea as far as this problem is concerned; it will not solve all the issues. Therefore, I would hope that if we were to receive a report to Parliament, it would look at not just the effectiveness of criminalisation but also at the effectiveness of the totality of policies on forced marriage.
My noble friend Lady Thornton moved an amendment earlier that would have broadened the scope of this and placed obligations on various public authorities in terms of the actions that they should take. I hope that the report requested by the noble Baroness would look not just at whether criminalisation makes a difference for good or ill, but also at whether all the other activities that the Government and public agencies undertake to try to eliminate forced marriage are effective. I think that that would be very valuable in terms of taking these matters forward.
Lord Faulks (Con)
My Lords, I have little to add to what my noble friend Lady Manzoor said so expertly in moving this amendment. As a member of the JCHR, this was one of the recommendations that we made in our report.
I very much endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said. I hope that the reporting to Parliament would not just be a dry recitation of the effect of criminalisation in terms of statistics, but would go wider. I am sure that the Minister will reassure us on that. This should not be simply a formality. We are stepping into an acutely sensitive area and, although we said that we approved cautiously of the decision to criminalise forced marriage, it is a matter that must be looked at very carefully for fear that more harm may come than good.
Prisons: Suicide
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey
It must be this side’s turn eventually. I declare an interest as chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody. Given the importance of properly investigating the deaths, particularly of young people but of anyone who dies unexpectedly in prison, is the Minister satisfied with the level of resources available to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman to carry out their function and, secondly, does he not agree that it is time that the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman was made statutorily independent of the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service?
Lord McNally
On that latter point I will have to take advice. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his appointment to the independent advisory panel. It was set up in 2008 and its shared purpose is to bring about a reduction in the number and rate of deaths in all forms of state custody and to share the lessons that can be learnt from these deaths. The ministerial board incorporates senior decision-makers, experts and practitioners in the field. This extended cross-section approach to deaths in custody allows for better learning and sharing of lessons across the sector.
Arctic Report Card
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for mentioning the Green Deal, which will of course help very much in how we respond individually to a very serious issue. Greenhouse gases are the key cause of climate warming. We have invested heavily in research to ensure that, working with Defra, we have many ways of responding to the climate change which is happening around us and to ensure that other countries are working with us in that response.
Lord Harris of Haringey
In the past 60 years more than half of the ice in the Arctic has disappeared. That opens up the prospect of the north-west passage—which we all remember from our history books in childhood—becoming a reality. This has enormous strategic implications not only in the movement of goods but in extra exploration for both oil and other minerals. How do the Government see the United Kingdom’s strategic interests, and are they pursuing those through their associate membership of the Arctic Council?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Lord is right to raise that issue. Although we are not a member of the Arctic Council or an Arctic state, we have been invited in as observers and we are able to have a very constructive dialogue with those Arctic states and with other observer states as well.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey
I originally planned to make a very straightforward speech in support of the amendment of my noble friend Lord Lipsey. I will not rise to the helpful and interesting trail that my noble friend Lord Maxton has dragged along the ground about ID cards, but his analysis is accurate. We would have had a much clearer database that could inform the electoral registration process and much else besides. However, I will not go down that road.
I cannot allow the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, about the north being disadvantaged because of the south. However, the point that I want to make about the amendment is that it is accepted throughout the House that there are inadequacies with the current level of electoral registration. I have not heard any noble Lord arguing that the electoral register is currently a perfect piece of data collection. It is inadequate. There are significant shortfalls. Reference has been made to the report done by the Electoral Commission in March 2010 The Completeness and Accuracy of Electoral Registers in Great Britain. Noble Lords can see that that is clear in terms of the number of people who should be registered but are not. But the significant point and the one that I want to make which has not been made so far in this debate is that the shortfall is variable.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
Does my noble friend agree that one of the variables is the zeal of the local authority officers responsible for that?
Lord Harris of Haringey
It is not only a question of the zeal, but of the budgets that they are allocated and the way in which that resource is used.
If noble Lords look at the register, they will find that there is a shortfall that is variable throughout the country and in different types of area. If we accept, as no doubt the noble Lords opposite all do, that the objective of this legislation is to create fairness across the country, the Bill has to address the shortfalls in electoral registration and, in particular, the variables between different parts of the country.
In the Electoral Commission’s March 2010 study there were a number of case studies in various parts of the country. One was in London, in Lambeth. It has a population of 266,169 and a population density of 99.2 persons per hectare. There is an ethnic minority population of 50.4 per cent and worklessness of 16 per cent and so on. In particular, figures were quoted for the percentage of households that were in the private rented sector and the percentage of residents who had moved in the past 12 months.
In the London Borough of Lambeth, 17.7 per cent of those on the register had moved in the previous 12 months. That is a substantial degree of turnover and churn. In my experience of being an elected politician in London for many years, that degree of churn and turnover was a particular facet of many parts of London. It would be true of many other inner-city areas and parts of the country, but it was not uniform. It was not uniform in London and it is not uniform around the country. Therefore, without the sort of amendment moved by my noble friend—or an alternative because there are a number of other possible ways of addressing this—the Bill is in danger of institutionalising poorer representation in certain sorts of area.
I looked at the paper produced by London councils in the past few months which examined the 2001 census. This paper tries to ensure that next year’s census will be a better one. Yet even if we use the census data as the source of information about what the population and the registered electorate ought to be, there are problems. Kensington and Chelsea—not, I have to say, the typical example of a rundown inner-city area—had the lowest response rate in the country to the 2001 census. Its response rate was 64 per cent. I suspect that the good residents of Kensington and Chelsea might not be interested in filling in the form about the census, but would probably make considerable efforts to make sure that they were on the electoral register to return MPs of a particular colour to Parliament. The point is that there was that degree of poor response even to the census in that part of London.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My credentials are that I was an elected councillor for the ward of Golborne in north Kensington. My noble friend will have to be a little careful in talking about Kensington and Chelsea as an affluent borough, when the northern part of Kensington has some of the areas of highest deprivation in the country. It was a cauldron of social movement, with fair housing and the first legal advice bureau with Peter Kandler. It was an area of multi-deprivation, so there must be considerable variations within the one London borough from the affluent south to the relatively disadvantaged north.
Lord Harris of Haringey
Indeed, that is the case. The interesting issue about that, since we were talking earlier today about the importance of community, is that that is one area where we now see parliamentary constituencies straddling local borough boundaries in London. I think that the MP for the area that my noble friend described is Karen Buck, who also represents part of Westminster. It is a bad idea to cross London borough boundaries; I suspect that we will return to that at a later stage in this Committee. However, my point is about the degree of underrepresentation. I picked on Kensington and Chelsea because, apart from those pockets which my noble friend knows so well, it is not regarded in most people’s minds as being an area of acute deprivation—although parts of it are.
The figures are: in Hackney, there was a 72 per cent response rate; in Tower Hamlets it was 76 per cent; in Hammersmith and Fulham, 76 per cent; in Camden, 77 per cent; in Southwark, 77 per cent; in Islington, 78 per cent, and in Lambeth, 79 per cent. The point is that the work which has been done where there are concentrations of poor response, either to the census or to electoral registration, demonstrates a number of characteristics. First, the highest non-response rates come from those who rent from a housing association or a council. There are higher non-response rates: where the occupants are from black, Asian or mixed ethnic groups; where the household contains a single-parent family; where the average age of the people in the household is 70-plus; and in areas with higher income deprivation scores.
I am not making any moral judgment about people in those households. I am only reflecting the research that has been done, which demonstrates that there are certain socioeconomic characteristics suggesting, as my noble friend Lord Lipsey has identified, that there will be lower rates of registration.
Lord Rooker
My noble friend makes an interesting point and I am not gainsaying anything that he has said, but the other propensity among the groups that he has just listed is that of knowing how to apply for housing benefit. Therefore, they are on a list and the local authorities know, because we know the propensity and the distribution. I cannot see what the problem is or why, on the census, we put up with this low rate when there is easily obtainable information to know that there are people there. The propensity to claim is co-related exactly with the groups that my noble friend has just listed. I do not understand why we still have this problem now, let alone having had it 10 years ago.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I do not disagree with anything that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has said. He is right—it is not something that we should necessarily tolerate. If there was much more of the passing of these registers, electronically, between the various agencies, or if we adopted the simple solution that the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, put forward—that of an identity card—we would resolve some of these problems. However, my point is not that we could resolve them like this, but that there is a wide variation, which is not standard in terms of the degree of electoral registration, and that it happens to be correlated with certain types of socioeconomic group.
My noble friend Lady Farrington, before she made her tendentious comments about the north and the south, made a point about the consequences and implications of the poll tax.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
I would like to correct any misunderstanding I created. I was referring to government allocation of resources to local authorities, not to a disparity between the north and the south in terms of electoral registration. Some of us believe that there are some leafy suburbs in the south—not the sort of area that my noble friend represented so well for so long—that have done quite well out of the Government’s financial allocation to local authorities.
Lord Harris of Haringey
That is certainly the case in one or two parts of London, though, as a general principle, London subsidises the rest of the country, particularly the countryside, to a quite extortionate extent.
Lord Harris of Haringey
Well, you did draw me on to it. When you bear in mind that the population of London is the same as the populations of Scotland, Wales and, I think, Northern Ireland combined, there is underresourcing of London, which is, after all, the economic engine of the United Kingdom. However, that is not the point that I wish to engage with and I suspect that, if we persist in it, it will offend Members opposite.
Lord Harris of Haringey
The point I am trying to make, which is very important, is that there is a variation in the registration that it is linked, for whatever reasons, to certain socioeconomic groups and may be linked to the history of the poll tax and the community charge. I well remember the way in which official statistics on the number registered plummeted in the time of the poll tax. I was the leader of a local authority at that time; we had the distinction of setting the highest community charge in the country, because of the underresourcing of a borough such as mine—no doubt akin to one or two of the areas that my noble friend refers to elsewhere in the country. The point is that there is a variation.
If noble Lords believe that we are trying to create a fairer electoral system—and we are all, presumably, signed up to that—we have to address that problem. It might be an acceptable argument to say that we would simply go with the last electoral register, if the degree of underrepresentation were consistent in every constituency—but it is not. It is biased towards specific areas. I am not going to suggest that the reason there is a reluctance to resolve that issue is because it is biased against certain types of community which might have a propensity to vote in a particular way. I am not going to make that suggestion, I am simply going to make the point that, if we really believe in a fairer electoral system, we have to address this issue of underrepresentation.
It will take some time to deal with it, whether we go down the identity card route recommended by my noble friend Lord Maxton, or whether we try to cross-reference different registers. Therefore, if the Government are intent on going ahead with this legislation at this speed, they have to put into the system some mechanism for making the adjustment that my noble friend Lord Lipsey has put forward, and I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, replies to this debate he will acknowledge that there is a problem with underregistration, that that is variable and that the Government must address it.
Lord Strathclyde
No, the commission will be using a register of electors. It may well wish to use a database to see where potential electors are, who can then register. What are these databases? Let me just—
Lord Strathclyde
Let me just finish the point that I am trying to get to on the databases. I have a fascinating list: the databases that we are concentrating on are those held by the DWP, HMRC, the DVLA, the national pupil database held by the DfE, MoD data on service personnel and the Student Loan Company. I am happy to give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Harris of Haringey
Perhaps the Leader of the House can enlighten me, but I had understood that the fundamental principle of data sharing was that the use to which data would be put would be made explicit. Therefore, my noble friend Lord Maxton’s question on what permissions are being given to the Electoral Commission in terms of what it can use the data for is absolutely pertinent. Have the Government given permission that the data can be used for adding to the list, or is it simply for checking whether people have erroneously registered?
Lord Strathclyde
This gives me an opportunity to read out the final couple of lines of my brief.
The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, has worked hard on all this. He said that the amendment was probing. He has demonstrated great care in bringing this issue forward again. I am extremely happy, if it would be helpful, to facilitate a meeting with him and my officials to go through the matter with him.
Lord Lipsey
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for that offer, which I would happily take up for my education, if not for that of his officials. It enables me to make a point, because a lot more noble Lords are in the Chamber now than when they were enjoying pudding and I was moving the amendment. With the exception of the utterly disgraceful spat between north and south on my own Benches, anyone reading the debate, which has lasted for just over an hour, would agree that it was in the very best traditions of this House—as was the previous debate about the Isle of Wight. Without going into the past, I hope that I speak for the House in being glad that, on this amendment, we have returned to our great traditions in this Chamber.
Perhaps I may make one point to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Perhaps, having just come into the Chamber, he missed the point that I made at the beginning, which goes to the heart of this matter. He rightly said that these estimates of notional electorates would be imprecise, which of course is true. However, a figure that is imprecise is not necessarily worse than a figure that is utterly precise and utterly bogus, and that is what the electoral registers are. By consent, the registers are only 91 to 92 per cent accurate overall. Also by consent, in many areas their accuracy is very well short of those figures. There would also be imprecision in the estimates—of course I accept that and it would be silly to do otherwise—but I think that that imprecision would be very much less than the precise falsity represented by the numbers on the electoral register.
Lord Harris of Haringey
Before the noble Lord concludes and decides whether he wishes to press the amendment to a vote, perhaps, like me, he was so bowled over by the very engaging offer of a meeting by the noble Lord the Leader of the House that he missed whether he accepts the principle that the unfairness of the underregistration is differentially spread around the country and that, if the Government’s objective of fairness is to be achieved, something must be done about that in this Bill.
Lord Lipsey
I wholly agree with what the noble Lord says, and I would have drawn attention to it if I had not been so excited by the prospect that, instead of a weekend off after tonight, I shall spend my time closeted with the Minister’s officials. I can offer them 3 am on Sunday morning or 7 pm on Sunday evening in between writing my speeches for Monday’s proceedings on this Bill, should there be any. I do not want to go on for too long, so I shall resume my seat and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 66ZA withdrawn.
Amendment 66ZB
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord McNally
My Lords, if there were a general election next January, prisoners would not get the vote even if the Government had announced their intentions in December. The two things are separate. The Government will announce their intentions on prisoner voting and it will be handled in the proper way with a Statement in both Houses. As I said, the usual channels will find an opportunity for a full debate and in due course legislation will probably be brought forward. However, that legislation is separate from the legislation currently before the House, which is why—
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, perhaps by the time the noble Lord reaches the end of his sentence, he can clarify one point for me, because what he is saying is becoming increasingly complex. As I understand it, the Government are rescuing this issue from the long grass, into which it was put for many years while people considered the implications of the European Court of Human Rights judgment. The noble Lord seems to be suggesting that, now that it has been rescued from the long grass, the intention is to embark on a process of Statements, consultation, debates and legislation, which will mean that it goes back into the long grass for very many years. Is that the case?
Lord McNally
Not at all, my Lords; it is called parliamentary democracy. There are enough experts on those Benches, including the noble Lord, to know that the process that I described is exactly what happens when there is a major change such as this—it will require legislation and parliamentary time. However, I really do not think that there should be any talk on those Benches about long grass and delays, given the five years that they spent on two consultation processes, which, as my noble friend said from a sedentary position, is another way of saying “prevarication”. We will come forward with specific proposals—not in this Bill but at the proper time. In the mean time, I again urge the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Harris of Haringey
Is it intended that there will be a Bill in this Session of Parliament or are we talking about putting this off until 2012 and beyond?
Lord McNally
I have absolutely no idea. I cannot, in the Committee stage of one Bill, start committing the Government to parliamentary time for another Bill. One would almost think that the Benches opposite were trying desperately to get past four o’clock, whereas I know that they are probing me and they continue to do so.
Prisons: Muslim Prisoners
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord McNally
My Lords, there may be several reasons why the proportion of Muslims in custody is as it is. I was surprised to find that they constituted 3 per cent of the population but 10 per cent plus of the prison population. Further study is needed to see whether we can identify some of the reasons for this.
On training, we are committed to developing effective communication between prisoners and staff. We have already taken a number of actions aimed at ensuring effective staff engagement with Muslim prisoners. During my briefing, I was shown a card issued to all staff on how to engage with Muslim prisoners. It very much emphasises a respect for their faith and how it should be handled within the prison.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, what is the rate of conversion to Islam within prisons and what steps are the Prison Service taking in terms of monitoring radicalisation and external speakers who come into prisons?
Lord McNally
I do not have precise figures on conversions, but I know the background to this question of whether or not there is radical Islamisation in prisons. The studies that I have been shown reveal no conclusive evidence of this, although there are examples which give rise to concern. The staff and the wider Prison Service keep a close eye on imams in prisons. Bringing them in to lecture, preach and minister within prisons has been one of the benefits, but we must make sure that it is a positive influence, as the noble Lord suggested.