Guardianship (Missing Persons) Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 6th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, what a privilege to follow the hard work and moving speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. We on these Benches are more than happy to support the Bill at its Second Reading. It provides a much-needed remedy to the sometimes devastating financial and legal problems faced by the families of missing persons as a result of a gap in the law, which has remained unfilled for far too long.

As we have heard, each year more than 80,000 adults are reported missing to British police forces. Mercifully, most are found safe and well within the first week but around 4,000 remain missing for more than seven days and up to 1,500 adults are missing for longer than a year.

For the families left in limbo, the pain of not knowing where their loved one is or what has happened to them is compounded by a range of serious practical, financial and legal difficulties as the result of a disappearance. The vanishing of the individual has no legal impact on the person’s obligations and commitments. As a result, their affairs may be unmanaged and unprotected for the duration of their absence. Without a court mandate, institutions such as banks or insurance agencies are limited in how they can deal with those left behind. This can have disastrous repercussions, particularly for those who have shared assets or liabilities with the missing person, or for those financially dependent on them.

The creation of a new legal status of guardian of the property and affairs of the missing person would mean that families had an alternative and more immediate recourse when seeking to protect the financial and legal interests of their loved one. Under current law, in the Presumption of Death Act 2013, family members must wait a minimum of seven years before application can be made for a declaration that a missing person is presumed dead and their property can pass to others. Under the Bill, applications can be made after 90 days following a disappearance, and the court would be able to tailor the terms of the appointment of a guardian to the circumstances of the missing individual.

The charity Missing People has been campaigning to fill the gap for nearly six years, launching its Missing Rights campaign in 2011. Your Lordships will remember that, following calls for reform, the coalition Government launched a consultation in 2014, and in 2015 confirmed that they would legislate to create a new legal status of “guardian of the property and affairs of a missing person”. Despite a Written Statement from the then Justice Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in which he expressed his hope that legislation would be brought forward without delay in the new Parliament, it failed to materialise. Today, however, by means of this Private Member’s Bill and through the admirable hard work of Kevin Hollinrake MP in the House of Commons and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, resolution for families left behind is finally in sight. We owe a substantial debt of gratitude to both parliamentarians.

This much-needed legislation would plug a legal lacuna that has been acknowledged by the previous Government, the present Ministry of Justice and, as of late March, honourable Members in the other place. Support for the Bill in its current form has also been expressed by a variety of stakeholders including the charities Missing People, Prisoners Abroad, Hostage UK and the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

As my colleague in the other place, Richard Burgon, said at the first sitting of Committee on the Bill:

“We must not drag our heels”,—[Official Report, Commons, Guardianship (Missing Persons) Bill Committee, 21/2/17; col. 5.]


when there is political consensus on the need for and appropriateness of this legislation. So I urge your Lordships to lend support to this fine Bill and to help ease at least the practical burdens—if not, unfortunately, the ongoing emotional suffering—of those families who continue to wait for news of a loved one or their return.

Finally, if I may, I thank all of your Lordships for your company and courtesy, and for the enormous contribution that you have made to the life of this country in recent weeks and months. I wish you all a very happy Easter with your own families.

Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friends and colleagues are far too kind in giving me this opportunity to respond to a debate in which I think I have agreed with every word that has been spoken from across the House. The debate has been particularly pointed for both the humanity and logic in the contributions from all sides. It is always a particular privilege to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on any issue relating to prison reform and rehabilitation more generally. I must confess that when I was a child, the name Rambo conjured a rather different figure—a bloodthirsty cinema character played by Sylvester Stallone. Years later, when I entered the law, then the Home Office and finally a human rights NGO, the name Rambo was often whispered. I came to realise that it was the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to whom everyone referred. He has an incredible record of holding successive Governments to account on urgent issues—becoming increasingly urgent, I might add—in our penal system. It is in this knowledge that I completely support from this side his call for a Second Reading of this important Bill and everything he is trying to achieve by bringing it forward.

As we have heard, the Bill seeks to reduce rehabilitation periods and is one aspect of vital reform that is necessary to the now completely outdated 1974 Act. Despite commitments from successive Governments to push through reform in this area—we heard about the excellent Breaking the Circle report, produced by the Labour Government in 2002, to which the noble Lord referred in his introduction—we have seen only incremental changes over the years. That Act is now completely inconsistent with contemporary sentencing practice. The result is that, far from allowing reformed individuals the second chance that is promised in the Act, its shortcomings leave many excluded from any prospect of rehabilitation and meaningful employment after they have completed their sentences.

Under the current legislation, as we have heard, the rehabilitation periods—in truth the disclosure periods—are overlong and not based on any real evidence. For those serving sentences of over four years, convictions can never be spent. Individuals are therefore forced to live with the shadow of their convictions, through a lifetime of disclosure and without the prospect of review. In addition, the legal regime relating to criminal record exposure, as laid out in the 1974 Act, is inclusive of children. Children, who find themselves exempt under this Act from the presumption that their spent sentence will not be disclosed, face a very uncertain future of indefinite disclosure, alienated from opportunities in education, employment and housing. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, sentencing inflation over the years has changed and weakened the efficacy of the original 1974 Act regime.

In terms of non-disclosure of convictions, rehabilitation is just one part of a system that is supposed to serve those individuals and the general public. It is an essential tool in reducing crime and ensuring public safety. For our criminal justice system to be effective, it must be reformed in the round. We face a crisis in our prisons. Cuts to public spending under this Government, I am sorry to say, have been at the expense of prison security and public safety. Currently, over 84,000 prisoners are held in just 118 prisons, 75 of which are overcrowded. These 118 prisons are underresourced, understaffed and increasingly, dangerous places of violence. The Secretary of State herself has admitted that rates of violence and self-harm have increased significantly over the past five years, with 6,000 assaults on staff and 105 self-inflicted deaths in the 12 months leading up to June 2016. Since then, we have seen riots in six prisons across the country. It is not surprising in this context that our prisons are failing to deliver rehabilitation and, alongside a privatised probation service, are failing to reduce reoffending.

Against that backdrop, I share the noble Lord’s frustration with the much-anticipated White Paper, Prison Safety and Reform, published in November. Far from being,

“a blueprint for the biggest overhaul of our prisons in a generation”,

as promised, it lays down only sketchy policy objectives, very little guidance on implementation and even less on cost. The debate today takes place in this wider context and I urge the Government to respond to this Bill. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, intends to initiate a more substantial, cross-departmental review, beginning with criminal records disclosure and ending with the criminal justice system as a whole.

Finally, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for his perseverance and courage in bringing this issue back again and again. Yes, ultimately, this is an issue of human rights, but it is also one of sound public policy. He has dedicated so much of his working life to this and I hope to continue to dedicate mine in the same way. I look forward to making contributions to this House and to his campaign.