Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a genuine privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. I was privileged to work with her as the Home Secretary who brought in what was then the original Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill. I am painfully aware of how little progress we have been able to make and how important this legislation is today. I would also like to commend the noble Lord, Lord Carter, on his forthcoming maiden speech and to reconnect with him—I am sure he will make an enormous contribution—and share with my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti the sadness that we are not joined this afternoon by the late and much-lamented Igor Judge and Simon Brown, whom I personally miss greatly.

I will say just a word in following up what the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said. If there is a sense of commitment and duty, it is embodied in her decision to come back to take on this role. I share what she just said about the issues relating to mental health and what amounts to considerable and persistent anti-social behaviour and abuse by people who, of course, need treatment and support, but we also need to support those who are the victims of it. I have received many letters over the years—and still do—from people who have found their lives as neighbours simply made a misery. So I hope we can find a way of including persistent anti-social behaviour in this legislation.

I also hope—and perhaps the Minister might reflect on this—that we might help those who do not get support from the police; the victims of offences who contest the police’s failure to act and get caught up in internal reviews for which there is no appeal. The reviews by some forces in this country are excellent, and people are informed clearly as to why action has not been taken. But I will give just one example this afternoon: that of the Warwickshire Police force, which, frankly, in my view is an absolute disgrace, and the chief constable cannot even be bothered to write personally to a former Home Secretary. I will take that up another day.

I move now to Clause 48. I welcome very strongly the decision taken by the current Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, and commend the Minister in this House. It is really nice to have people who are prepared to listen and, even close to an election, take decisive decisions. The reduction in the licence period for IPPs is very welcome indeed. I commend everything that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said on this, and I am very glad that he has taken up the cudgel and is leading on these matters.

It surely must be possible to be able to distinguish IPPs from DPPs, and the young people who were sentenced under that particular clause when they were juveniles, as opposed to those who were sentenced as adults, even if the Government are not prepared to take up the challenge of the sentencing. It surely must be possible to provide mentoring and advocates on behalf of those who are caught up in this, as has been described this afternoon. It surely must be possible to pick up the excellent thematic inspection report of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation. I spent the weekend reading it—Christmas is coming late in the Blunkett household this year. The 11 recommendations and its conclusions are excellent, but they need implementation. It is incumbent on all of us to press the Government to make the action plan statutory; to include the recommendations in any iterations of the probation action plan; to take up the challenge, which has already been mentioned this afternoon, of what happens when prisoners are preparing for their appeal to the Parole Board and for release, where the inspection report indicates that there is a woeful lack of support and help for those who are preparing. There is a complete disconnect with offender managers, both inside the service and when people are on licence, partly because of the massive turnover and strange management practices within the service. I commend those to the Minister, and hope that he will be able to respond positively later this evening on those matters.

Finally, it is crucial we understand that, if we are to prevent victims of the future, we need to ensure that the rehabilitation of those who have committed offences is taken as seriously as it is in the debate this afternoon. In seven minutes, I have not really been able to cover the field. There is so much to be done and so much to come together, but in the spirit of what the current Lord Chancellor and the Minister in this House are doing, we might just be able, in the months ahead, to get this right. I sincerely hope so.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I may be as underinformed as anyone but my understanding is that the classic case of restorative justice is that once there has been a prosecution and a conviction, there is a process for some kind of reconciliatory interaction between the victim and the offender—for example, of the kind that my noble friend Lord Hodgson so eloquently described—in a way which enables both parties to process and come to terms with what has happened. It is not typically an alternative to having a prosecution in the first place, as I understand it, although that might arise.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I know there is an unwritten convention that noble Lords should not intervene when they were not able to be here at the beginning of a group, which in this case was last week, but I do not think that convention prevents me asking a question. Is it not really important that people in the prison system are able to understand what they can do for themselves, and for the victim, by engaging with restorative justice? That is one of the reasons I put my name to Amendment 14. The right honourable Stephen Timms in the other place is an excellent example: he has corresponded with, and is arranging to meet, the perpetrator of the attack on him many years ago. That will, I hope, assist them both—the perpetrator in her release and her future—and give some consolation through her coming together with the victim, who in this case was Stephen Timms.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for his question. I would obviously not dream of making any procedural point, as it is a very fair question. I do not think it is clearly envisaged in the Bill or the code, as it stands at the moment, that it should be the perpetrator who is seeking some sort of restorative justice, rather than it being something that the victim is entitled to. The noble Lord’s point is well made and we should think further about it.