Farmer Review

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, as I have huge admiration for the work of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the report on the importance of family ties in prison reform that he and the excellent organisation Clinks produced. Congratulations.

This is an issue I feel very passionately about. In 2013, I asked an Oral Question on the subject. In 2014, I also supported an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill raising the concerns of Barnardo’s, the children’s charity, on the importance of family ties in prison. I declare an interest as a vice-president of Barnardo’s, which runs a number of services for children affected by parental imprisonment. I have made a number of visits to prisons, most recently just last week to Rye Hill prison in Rugby, where I have heard from prisoners themselves about the value that maintaining contact with their family and children brings, not just for their own rehabilitation and reform but for the well-being and future prospects of their children, too.

Barnardo’s reports that children with a parent in prison feel isolated and ashamed and suffer low self-esteem, unable to talk about their situation because they are scared of being bullied and judged. Their needs are often forgotten. An estimated 200,000 children are living with a parent in prison, although this is just an estimate because these figures are not officially recorded—as I highlighted in this Chamber back in 2013. There is no policy or legislation to support these children within mainstream services. They are not recognised as a distinct group by local safeguarding children boards.

Barnardo’s has been campaigning to raise awareness of the distinct needs of this group of children for many years, so I very much welcome the noble Lord’s review. I was particularly pleased to see his overarching recommendation that family has to be, as he says, the “golden thread” running through the reforms across the prison estate. He was quite right to highlight a very basic principle that relationships are fundamentally important if people are to change. But more than that, limiting the impact on the child is vital if we are to break and tackle intergenerational cycles of offending, where 65% of boys with a father in prison go on to offend.

It is essential to help prisoners keep important family ties, so the classification of children’s visits as a privilege within the incentives and earned privileges, or IEP, scheme used in male prisons is an issue that comes up time and again and needs to be solved. The IEP scheme allocates the duration, frequency and quality of visits according to the behaviour of the offender. Family visit days are restricted to “enhanced” prisoners and demand a high level of performance, including demonstrating outstanding behaviour and seeking to obtain qualifications. This has a negative impact on the visits that can be made by their children. Consequently, some families have never experienced a family day, which allows for longer quality time between children and their fathers. In 2015, Barnardo’s published a report called Locked Out—Children’s Experiences of Visiting a Parent in Prison, which highlighted this very issue. Since then, the Government have pledged to review the IEP scheme, but there has not been any sign of such a review. When will the Government carry out this promised, long-awaited and important review?

I appreciate that discussing the issue of the treatment of those who have broken the law and are being punished for their crimes can divide opinion. What we must not lose sight of, however, is that those offenders often leave behind an innocent child or children who are also being punished. If we are truly to break the intergenerational cycle of offending that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, so robustly outlined in his report, then we must look through the eyes of the child and remind ourselves that childhood lasts a lifetime. We must do all we can to ensure that children receive the services and support that they need, and that we break down those barriers that prevent a child from having the relationship with their father that they might want and need. I therefore look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this important report.