Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill Debate
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Lord Ramsbotham
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Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill
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Lord Judd
My Lords, I am very glad to have this opportunity to support my noble friend. I had the privilege of serving on the Joint Committee on Human Rights when she was its distinguished chair. I then had the opportunity to see at first hand that this is not a passing interest of hers; it is something deeply rooted in her culture and in her sense of justice and the availability of justice for everyone. If justice, in its fullest sense, is to be delivered, what matters is the appropriateness of what is being done when someone is sentenced. It is not only my noble friend who in her very challenging report has spelt out the issues, but I am repeatedly impressed by the research which seems to come to the same conclusion that the overwhelming majority of women in prison should not be in prison at all.
I vividly recall visiting Holloway prison with the Joint Committee on Human Rights—I am not certain that my noble friend was the chair at the time—in connection with some work that we were doing. While we were there we got into very good conversation with some of the staff. It is easy to be prejudiced, but for me it is always interesting that in a place like Holloway you find a mix of people in the profession, including some very good, caring people who—for any of us who would want to be seen as humanitarians—are living a very challenging life in the front line of their professional services. I remember—and this was dealing specifically with short sentences—one woman turning on us in exasperation and saying: “I don’t think you people know what you are doing. We don’t understand what you are doing. These women’s lives are a story of chaos, and all we do by having the women in here for a short term is to increase the chaos in their life in terms of their relationship with their children, their relationship with the community of which they are a part, their relationship with life as they have got to live it”. Then she looked back a little poignantly and said: “Unless, of course, by having them in here for a few days we relieve them of some of the nightmare of pressures outside”.
It is an indictment of us all that we have such an inappropriate, wrong-headed approach towards how we deal with women who may have been caught up in some offence. From that standpoint, it is clear that there has to be an interdisciplinary approach. The problem—the challenge—goes across all sorts of different aspects of life. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, repeatedly reminds us in debates on such occasions, if you are trying to get a change of culture and drive through a new approach, you have to pin down who is really responsible. You have got to have specific arrangements in place to make sure it happens and that it is pursued. This is what my noble friend’s amendment is about: making sure that we stop talking about what is wrong, stop talking about what we should all be doing, and start to do it. If that is to happen, it needs a cross-section of people with a specific responsibility for which they are accountable to make sure it is happening. From that standpoint, I warmly commend the amendment and am glad to support it.
Lord Ramsbotham
In Committee, we had two separate amendments on this issue which was, in a way, a commentary on the fact that the vital issue of women in the criminal justice system was not even discussed in Committee in the other place. I am very glad to have been able to combine the two amendments in one, in the hope that this time we really may get something in the Bill.
I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has drawn attention to the need to get something done. Over the years there have been directors of women’s policy, women’s policy units, women’s policy groups, Ministers for Women, Ministers of prisons looking after it, but nothing has happened. Why? Because there has never been anyone who has been the agent for those people, responsible and accountable for overseeing that what is laid down actually happens. I have lost count of the number of times I have said that, but I say it again. The key word “implementation” appears in paragraph (4)(a) of the amendment and the word “delivery” in sub-paragraph (5)(a). With all the wisdom that has gone into this subject from many sources over many years, it is all there. Everyone knows what is to happen. What is lacking now is the drive to get it done. I therefore hope that the Minister will go away from this particular stage and reassure us that this time something will be done to action what is so well known.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, may I first put on record my thanks to the Minister, my noble friend Lord McNally, for a number of changes that he introduced to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act? I will do so because it has some relevance to the amendment that we are debating, which will assist many women to break the revolving-door syndrome of reoffending. There has been a near-100 per cent increase in the women's prison population in the past 20 years. The Government will find that the single initiative on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act will help reduce the women's prison population.
I am attracted to at least one element of the proposal contained in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston: namely, the importance of the Government publishing a strategy to improve the treatment of women in the criminal justice system. When we debated this in Committee, my noble friend Lord McNally said that the Government’s strategy had been set out by our honourable friend Crispin Blunt in a speech on 20 January. That was a good start, and I certainly welcomed that speech.
My noble friend the Minister then set out a series of measures that the Government were taking to improve the position of women in the criminal justice system. The measures included the provision of resources for diversion schemes for mentally disordered offenders; piloting drug recovery wings in women's prisons; giving women prisoners access to the work programme on release; developing intensive alternatives to custody for women; improving access to the private rented sector for women offenders; and developing support for female offenders who have suffered domestic abuse. No one in their right mind could object to these important and welcome developments.
The occasional speech needs to be crystallised. The published strategy document would start by setting out the Government’s overall objectives: for example, to reduce women’s offending—here I mention the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act; to reduce the unnecessary imprisonment of women; to ensure that every probation area and youth offending team has programmes geared to the special needs of women offenders; to place mentally ill women in appropriate treatment settings; and to increase opportunities for contact between women prisoners and their children.
Since we are all interested in outcomes, the strategy document would then set out the measures that the Government are taking to achieve each objective. Annual reviews would be published, assessing progress against each objective of the strategy. This would enable all concerned with the treatment of women to see that the Government had a thought-out, comprehensive strategy to improve the treatment of women in the criminal justice system. It would also enable the Government to be held to account for progress on each objective of the strategy. Very importantly, it would enable this to be done on the basis of accurate information about the measures that the Government were taking to improve the position.
Far from making life more difficult for the Government, this would help increase appreciation for the range of excellent work that is under way to tackle the injustices suffered by women in the criminal justice system. I therefore hope that the Minister will respond positively to the amendment, and in particular that he will agree to the publication of a strategy on women's offending, followed by annual updates on the progress being made towards meeting each objective of the strategy.
Lord Ramsbotham
I was very glad to put my name to this amendment. As always, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. On this occasion, I do so because it provides an opportunity, which is not present in much of the rest of the Bill, to mention the problems faced by the probation service.
It was a great pity when the probation service was made subordinate to the Prison Service under the arrangements of the National Offender Management Service because for years they had worked closely together with the courts and the police in the local area. The amendment draws attention to that relationship. It also makes the point that magistrates must know what is capable of being done in prisons so that there is relevance between what is ordered to be done for the rehabilitation of someone and what is able to be delivered. That will be different all over the country, and rightly so because conditions will be different. Also, as I mentioned in Committee, if prisons and the probation service had to do the same thing everywhere, it would help sentencers enormously to know what was there and what was not there, and the Ministry of Justice would also know what there was and could make good any shortfalls.
The other day, I was very alarmed to hear that the governor of Lindholme, Moorland and Hatfield prisons in Yorkshire had ordered the probation service out of those prisons because the local probation service in that part of Yorkshire was having to work with G4S over the provision of probation services. Presumably, that must have been under the direction of the National Offender Management Service and under all the marketing strategies that it is following. I mention that because I am very disturbed about probation services being marketed when the service is concerned with the face-to-face probation officer and offender relationship, which is absolutely crucial to rehabilitation.
I do not know on what authority the governor ordered the probation service out, but it is alarming because, if he is able to do that, he is interrupting the whole rehabilitation process and drawing attention to the fragility of probation, which must work closely in the community, with police and probation being subordinate to prisons. Therefore, apart from supporting this amendment, which I think improves the Bill and draws attention to the rehabilitative element of all that is going on, I am also glad that it allows us to draw attention to the problems faced by the probation service without which we are not going to be able to reduce the vast numbers in prison who are choking that system.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede
I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. I agree with everything she said. I remind the House that I currently serve on one of these committees in central London. It is not a statutory committee, but it is a very important committee from which I certainly benefit in my work as a magistrate, as I know all my colleagues do. Nevertheless, I want to make the point that there are other statutory committees. I am thinking of the bench training and development committees which are required to sit under statute. With the best will in the world, the officials administer those committees more thoroughly than they do the probation liaison committees, precisely because they are not statutory committees. For that reason alone, I recommend to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, that the statutory provision would add weight to what is, after all, one of the Government’s primary objectives, which is to make sure that the magistracy has confidence in community sentences.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
Having read the amendment as drafted, I was confused as to whether the mistake was a technical mistake, a mistake of law or a mistake of fact of the basis upon which the order was made. It is not clear from the wording here that the latter is the proper meaning. I am heartened to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, that she has received a communication from the Ministry of Justice saying that mistake does not mean the slip rule, which is a very familiar concept to lawyers. It may not be familiar to the bailiff who is knocking on the door. It is important that my noble friend should make it quite clear that a mistake of fact is needed; in other words, that if the magistrates’ court had been aware of the particular circumstances of the individual at the time that the warrant was to be enforced, it would not have made that order. If that is what it means and the Minister says so from the Dispatch Box, I would be satisfied with that. If that is not what it means, we need to discuss the issue further.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I speak in support of government Amendment 152ZA and also speak on behalf of my noble friend Lord Rix who unfortunately is unable to be present because of his wife’s ill health. I thank the Minister for the extremely productive meeting that we had, which has been mentioned. The points that my noble friend has asked me to raise arise out of the amendment which came after that discussion in support of what was said.
The context of this is the duty of the court to explain sentences in ordinary language, which we raised in Committee. The Minister admitted that the phrase would ensure only that most people could understand an explanation. While we welcome the amendment and believe that it has the ability to extend comprehension of the effect of a sentence on all parties concerned, which is an important development, we are still not certain that it covers the point about ordinary language. On that, we would like some clarification. We believe that the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee could offer a similar safeguard, but we are not sure about where that safeguard extends and how wide it is. Will the Minister clarify how confident she is that the committee will make rules regarding the need to go beyond ordinary language in certain circumstances? Will it actually make these rules? To what extent are the rules made by that committee binding on the court? The concern is that if the rules are merely guidance, they might not be put into practice, despite the best intentions of the Government and the committee.
Will the Minister tell us about the time scales? When will the committee be empowered to make such rules and when might they be enforced? Are we looking at something imminent? Will it depend on when the Bill is passed? Finally, what opportunities will there be for Members of both Houses to scrutinise the implementation of these measures in the future? If they are rules of the committee rather than something in the Bill, it is more difficult for us to monitor them. They have an enormous effect on the people whom we mentioned in Committee and their ability to understand the process of law.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, this has been another useful debate. I welcome the support of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for the Government’s changes to the duty to explain. I encourage him to feed in his concerns to the committee. I have no doubt whatever that noble Lords will scrutinise how the duty is being implemented. The fact that this may not be part of legislation will not stop people reporting, debating and asking whether this is working as it should. The Government clearly cannot dictate to the committee what it should make its rules on and what it should say, but I have no doubt that when and if noble Lords find that this is not being implemented as they feel it should be, that will have its effect.
On distress warrants, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her guarded welcome of the Government’s amendment. She questioned whether the amendment goes far enough and was kind enough to send an e-mail with a number of questions. She has referred to our response, which gives me an opportunity to expand on or clarify a number of those points. She was concerned, among other things, about whether it allowed for the withdrawal of a distress warrant where there had been a change in the offender’s circumstances or where the offender was deemed to be vulnerable. I will do my best to reassure her on a few points.
It is clear that the government amendment allows for the withdrawal of a warrant where there is a mistake in the decision to issue the warrant in the first place. The amendment covers the case where an offender is not in court when the warrant is issued, which results in the court not having the full information before it. This, in effect, amounts to a mistake. I hope that that also helps to reassure my noble friend Lord Thomas. If there has been a change of circumstances that, had it been known to the court, would have had an impact on the decision to issue a warrant, it is open to the debtor to argue that the warrant had been issued by mistake.
The noble Baroness also raised the question of bailiffs dealing with debtors who find themselves in hardship or appear to be vulnerable. It is important that we strike the right balance between protecting the vulnerable—she is right about that—and ensuring that fines, where appropriate, are paid. Noble Lords will have seen recent criticisms of fine payment rates. The fine is by far the most used sentence of the criminal courts.
In practice, however, when bailiffs come across hardship as defined in the guidance they should not execute the warrant and return it to the court. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I must say that we would welcome any further information on this matter and on the effectiveness, which she has queried, of the guidance. It is very important that that is monitored. The Government do not think that it would be appropriate for a bailiff simply to withdraw a warrant in regard to a fine issued by a court. This could undermine the decision made by the court, which is why such a power is not included in the amendment, although I realise that that will disappoint the noble Baroness. If, however, the fine was imposed because the full facts were not made clear to the court, or they had changed, the provision in the Bill could apply.
In the case of changed circumstances since the fine was imposed, the debtor can contact the court at any time to speak to a fines officer to have the matter reviewed. The Government would encourage any debtor to contact the fines officer or court about a change of circumstance, which is clearly a better approach than waiting until a bailiff seeks to execute a warrant, but it is important that we separate the two parts in that respect.
As I said in Committee, the Government think it is important that bailiffs are dealt with via effective guidance, national standards and contractual obligations. As the noble Baroness knows, the Government are consulting on the operation of bailiffs, and we will carefully consider responses to that consultation. I hope that the noble Baroness and the organisations with which she is associated will feed into that consultation.
I hope that the noble Baroness can be reassured that the government amendment addresses the key legal issue with distress warrants and places the decision on them properly with the courts. How bailiffs operate is a matter for consultation in order to make sure that they operate properly and as we would wish. I hope therefore that the noble Baroness is reassured and content with what the Government have brought forward.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, it is clear from our debates in Committee that there is agreement in all parts of the House on the merits of restorative justice and the case for ensuring that it is seen as a central and fundamental part of our criminal justice system. I will make five key points. First, it has a salutary impact on many offenders by bringing home to them the impact of their offence on victims. All too often offenders minimise or simply do not think about the effect of their actions on other people. In a restorative justice process the offender has no alternative but to face up to the impact of his or her offences on those at the receiving end. Secondly, restorative justice gives victims much more satisfaction than other ways of dealing with offenders. A lot of research has been carried out on this point. It is clear that victims who have been through restorative justice express satisfaction with that process. It enables victims to tell their story, express their hurt and receive recognition in a way that no other procedure does. It helps to give victims closure, reduce trauma and reduce their fear about the future. Many victims also feel very positive about being involved in a process which can contribute more effectively to the rehabilitation of the offenders. Thirdly, restorative justice reduces reoffending. I have the Home Office research. It found that it did so by around 14 per cent. The process thereby helps to reduce the number of people in the future who would otherwise have suffered loss, distress, injury or damage as a result of crime. Fourthly, restorative justice saves money. The Restorative Justice Consortium has estimated a cost saving of £185 million over two years based on 70,000 cases and a return of £9 for every £1 spent. Finally, a wider use of restorative justice will help to increase public confidence in sentencing. An ICM poll that was carried out last year found that 88 per cent of people wanted victims to have the opportunity to inform offenders of the harm and distress they have caused.
There were a number of speeches in Committee on this matter so I will not repeat all the arguments in favour but I want to put two or three suggestions to the Minister. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has tabled these new clauses and I think they require some discussion, even between now and Third Reading. One way is to include restorative justice in the statutory purposes of sentencing. Another is to enable courts to include restorative justice requirements in community orders. Another option that is open is to spell out that courts can use activities to require offenders to take part in restorative justice processes. Any or all of these proposals and approaches would help to keep restorative justice in the minds of sentencers and to achieve the Government’s aim of ensuring that it becomes a central part of the criminal justice system. This is not the time to look at a final outcome but I hope very much that this will open up a discussion with the Government with a view to seeing if they will move on any of these fronts. I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in what he has said.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I rise briefly to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. There was an extremely useful conference last week by the Thames Valley Partnership which has been pioneering restorative justice for many years. It was interesting to hear exactly how far the National Offender Management Service has gone in preparing for restorative justice to be administered in every prison and every probation area around the country. Indeed, staff are being trained to do it. In addition, the police have trained the all-important committee supervisors and people who run the committees which make it work. Therefore, it would seem logical if this effort is to be overseen and able to come to fruition that it should be backed up by the statutory recognition in the Bill if at all possible.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. We are entirely in agreement that restorative justice represents a significant way forward. It is calculated, as the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, said, to save public funds, reduce reoffending rates and prove acceptable to the wider community, which is not as hard-line in these matters of penal policy as sometimes people imagine. Restorative justice has been shown to be welcomed by 80 per cent of the victims who participate in it. That in itself is a testimony to its effectiveness. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will feel able to accept the amendment but, if she is not, I hope that she will undertake to meet the noble and learned Lord and other colleagues before Third Reading to allow a further and final opportunity to discuss the way forward to improving this part of the Bill, recognising that it will contribute to the intentions of the Government.
Lord Ramsbotham
“CHAPTER 1AYoung adult offenders strategyYoung Adult Offenders Strategy
(1) The Secretary of State shall in each year—
(a) publish a strategy designed to promote the just and appropriate treatment of young adult offenders in the criminal justice process, and(b) appoint a person with responsibility for leading and co-ordinating the implementation of that strategy. (2) Publication under subsection (1)(a) shall be effected in such manner as the Secretary of State considers appropriate for the purpose of bringing the strategy to the attention of persons engaged in the administration of criminal justice and of the public.
(3) For the purposes of this section “young adult offender” means a person who is aged at least 18 but under 21 when convicted.”
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, in an earlier debate today the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, said that the two most vulnerable groups in prison are children and women. There is another group that is in many ways the most neglected as well as the most vulnerable, and that is young adults, who are in the halfway house between being children and adults. There is nobody in charge of them—they are lost souls. In the prison system, those in young offender establishments, or the split sites, are poor relations. Most facilities are given to children aged between 15 and 18, under the requirements of the contract let by the Youth Justice Board, and young offenders get what is left, which is frequently not enough to occupy them entirely. Whereas we have a Youth Justice Board concentrating on the needs of children and have had many reports, including that of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, which we discussed earlier, dealing with women, there is nothing dealing with this group other than the Criminal Justice Alliance and the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, which consists of 13 organisations from the criminal justice, health and youth organisations that have been calling for a long time for something to be done about this.
In Committee, my noble friend Lord Adebowale and I mentioned the problems of this group, but largely in connection with the community. I want to mention that community trials have been going on but also to focus on imprisonment, because in our prison system at the moment young men of this age group are disproportionately represented. At the end of September 2011, there were 8,317 18 to 20 year-olds in prison in England and Wales. The sentenced numbers in this age group have gone up by 30 per cent since 1997. If we extend the age group to 18 to 24, which is frequently done, we find that although that group represents only one in 10 of the population, it represents one in three of those sentenced to imprisonment and of those in the hands of the probation service. They account for one-third of the total social and economic costs of crime to the nation. In other words, this group represents a particular problem within the criminal justice system, which to my mind does not appear to be properly settled, and indeed has not been for some time.
There are very promising signs. In Committee, we mentioned the success of the intensive alternative to custody schemes, which are being piloted and pioneered by the Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire probation trusts. They were tailored to the specific needs of this age group. The probation officers commenting on the schemes said, interestingly, that this was the first time they could remember having any hope of achieving anything on reoffending with this age group because at last there were programmes that were tailored to their needs. That was in stark contrast to comments made by the Chief Inspector of Prisons on young adults in one prison; he said that the young men were “sleeping through their sentences”. Commenting on young offenders in this group as a whole, he said that there was a lack of engagement in work, education and training opportunities across the whole YOI estate.
That cannot be sensible—certainly in terms of tomorrow—because if this group, who are so volatile in criminal activities, are being left to do nothing while they are in the hands of the criminal justice system, it must be a contributor to crime rather than a preventer of it. Commenting on the amendment that I put forward in Committee, the Minister warned that the Government did not have the resources to deliver intensive interventions with or supervision of this age group. I acknowledge that it is expensive. It is not a cheap option to do something with them, but on the other hand I put it to the Government that it is more expensive to do nothing and that we cannot afford that. What should we therefore best do?
Since Committee, I have had extremely productive meetings with the Minister, the Prisons Minister and Simon Boddis, who is the official in NOMS responsible for devising and introducing offender programmes—and who had the good fortune to be my principal psychologist when I was Chief Inspector of Prisons. I must admit that I have been encouraged by much of what I heard about what is going on, in areas such as the introduction of work and drug and alcohol treatment programmes. I have to admit, however, that I am concerned by the apparent overfocusing on payment by results, because I am uncertain whether payment by results really works when measuring reconviction. Who is responsible or not responsible for preventing reconviction? You really do not know which factor, which programme or which event it is, therefore how can you know exactly who qualifies for payment?
Yet in order even to have a payment-by-results regime, you have to have a structure in which it is conducted. What I do not see in the whole NOMS structure, as I have said on many other aspects of the system, is anyone in charge or being responsible for overseeing the programmes. Here you have a perfect example of the intensive alternatives to custody scheme in one part of the system. Why should that not be adopted in the other, and if it is all happening in NOMS, why should somebody not be driving it? If that happened, and if somebody was really focusing on the whole problem, the identification of what is needed and what can be done would be much sharper, and the expenses would become much clearer. Sensible planning would therefore be easier.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I expected that response. However, I remind the Minister that I have worked in Whitehall for many years. I do not disagree with him about Ministers being responsible; of course they are, but the question is how do they exercise that responsibility? They cannot do it on a 24 hour, seven days a week basis because they have many other things to do. Therefore, they need a structure to help them do it. The noble Lord referred to a command structure. You can call it what you like but it is a matter of people being responsible and accountable to a Minister for making certain that what the Minister wants to happen does happen. That happens everywhere—in schools, hospitals, businesses and the Armed Forces, but it does not seem to happen in the Prison Service.
I am very concerned about disseminating all responsibility down to the local level. I have said many times in this House that two things are involved in this. One is the question of what should be done, which is the central responsibility, but how it is done is the local responsibility. If you get that the wrong way round and nothing but “how?” comes out from the centre at the top and all the “what” is left down below in the local areas, you get confusion. People in the local areas need to know what they have to do. They should be allowed to disburse their resources locally as there will be different needs in different areas. That again seems to me common sense because unless you have a “what?” coming down, nobody knows where they are going. I have spoken to the chairman of the Youth Justice Board, and I understand that that body would be more than happy to tackle this measure. However, the chairman made the point that she did not want the youth offending teams involved in working with this age group. I accept that entirely. However, the success of the intensive schemes pioneered by the probation service shows that it is taking a keen interest in this group, and I see no reason to interrupt that. Therefore, it seems to me that the framework is there.
The Minister mentioned that a lot of things are going on but was not very specific. In the same spirit in which we have met to talk about many issues after Committee, can we meet to discuss this matter as it is far too important just to be left in the air at half past eight at night without, frankly, it being completely clear? I understand what he says about payment by results.
Lord McNally
I am very willing to meet. The noble Lord knows how much I value his experience, expertise and commitment in this area. I am happy to meet him to discuss this matter as often as he likes. However, later this week I will be sitting down with ministerial colleagues to discuss a detailed report on the various areas of MoJ business with the civil servants with direct line responsibility for them. We will have gone through policy areas and will be looking at various policy outcomes. The idea that somehow the National Offender Management Service is drifting somewhere outside ministerial control or accountability or that it is not being set various tasks and responsibilities is just not true.
On the other side, as has been acknowledged, we are dealing with very difficult and straitened times. The resources available to target this area are extremely limited. We shall see whether we can involve payment by results as one way of getting good results and resources into this area. We do not doubt the problem. I am very willing to continue to have discussions with the noble Lord, but I do not want to give him any false hope that we can go down this way in this Bill.
Lord Ramsbotham
I thank the Minister for that reply. In no way am I seeking to interfere; I am merely seeking to ensure that our commitment to this very important problem is properly recognised because we wish to share everything that he has shared with us that has come up from below to ensure that due account is given when we get an opportunity to do so.
I am not going to talk about payment by results because, as the Minister says, this is early days and the Government have set their sights on it; they have pilot schemes in place and we shall know more. It is premature to take more than that, other than to reflect concerns that are being reflected to me by people who have to operate it on the ground, particularly the small voluntary organisations which operate in this area and which are finding it enormously difficult to survive. In view of the fact that there is so much to play for in this area, it would be sensible to continue the dialogue. Therefore, I wish to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
“( ) The Secretary of State shall—
( ) delegate responsibility for implementing release plans for IPP prisoners, and( ) make a Statement to both Houses of Parliament setting out to whom they have delegated this responsibility.( ) The Secretary of State shall, once the work is completed and within one year of enactment, report to both Houses of Parliament when all release plans for IPP prisoners are completed.”
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I shall be as brief as I can. Overcrowding, as we all know, is the scourge of imprisonment. With far too many people in prison who should not be there, inadequate resources are unable to be deployed to the people who need them most; that is, the people who present the greatest risk to the public.
Having welcomed the end of the unspeakable indeterminate sentence in this Bill, I was very concerned about those people who are in prison serving indeterminate sentences who do not know their release date. Some have already exceeded their tariff and more exceed their tariff almost every day. That is why I raised the issue in Committee. I was very grateful to the Minister for his letter of 16 February in response, in which he described to me the workings of the Indeterminate Sentence Prisoners Co-ordination Group, which had been set up in 2010 not to manage the cases of individual prisoners but, interestingly enough, to provide strategic oversight—a word for which I was berated by the Minister earlier—and co-ordination of the whole system of management of the whole sentence itself.
The purpose of this group is, apparently, to develop and promote the most effective means of managing indeterminate sentence prisoners and to ensure that resources are effectively directed. To this end, it has developed and co-ordinated strategies about assessment, sentence planning and delivery, access to interventions in the parole process, prison capacity issues and control in the community following release. It has also developed a tool for providing information on the numbers requiring specific interventions and also allocation to local prisons. In other words, there is a strategy; there is a group responsible for overseeing the strategy; and there is a tool for doing what is required. The only thing that is missing is the application of all this to the individuals who need individual plans made; otherwise, they will stay in prison for an indeterminate time caused by the fact that there are not the resources to do anything about getting them out.
In Committee, I proposed that it might be worth changing the burden of proof so that the Prison Service had to prove why someone should not be released rather than the person concerned having to prove that they should be. Therefore, this amendment is very much related to the information that the Minister gave me. Why could not the Indeterminate Sentence Prisoners Co-ordination Group be entrusted with making the plans for every individual indeterminate sentence prisoner, so that people—most particularly, those prisoners and their families from whom I receive several letters every day—know something about their future? I tabled this amendment again in the hope that something will be done to tackle this problem; otherwise I fear that the Government will be tarred with the same brush as those who introduced the sentence in the first place. I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I simply say to the noble Lord, Lord Gresford, that perhaps we could put in Written Questions every other six months.
I acknowledge what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said. Having tried various proposals in Committee and seen them rejected, I searched for other proposals. Perhaps we have learnt not only that there is a genuine desire for progress, which the Minister outlined, but that he has a tool that will enable him to answer our Written Questions, which I assure him he will receive. In that spirit, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
“Benefits payments to prisoners
(1) Regulations shall provide that a person undergoing imprisonment or detention in legal custody who, at the time that imprisonment or custody commences, is in receipt of any of the qualifying benefits, shall be assessed, during his or her time in imprisonment or custody, for eligibility for those benefits at the time of his or her imprisonment or custody.
(2) For the purposes of this section, the qualifying benefits are—
(a) universal credit;(b) income support;(c) personal independence payment, to the extent provided for in regulations made under section 84 (prisoners) of the Welfare reform Act 2012; and(d) any other benefits provided for in regulations made under this section.(3) Regulations made under this section shall provide that the assessment required under subsection (1) shall commence as soon as a person is received into imprisonment or custody.
(4) Regulations shall in particular provide that a person appointed by the Secretary of State shall record, at the time a person is received into imprisonment or custody, details of any qualifying benefits which are in payment at that time, together with any personal information needed to establish the person’s identity, including but not limited to their national insurance number.
(5) An assessment of eligibility under subsection (1) shall be completed in such time as to ensure that the person assessed receives payment of any benefits for which he is assessed as being eligible no later than one week after his release from imprisonment or custody.
(6) Regulations under this section shall be made by the Secretary of State and shall be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.”
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I shall again be brief, because we had a good discussion on this in Committee. I was very glad that the Minister told the House about the advance plans to use the work programme as the primary vehicle for help and support so that all prison leavers who claim jobseeker’s allowance will enter the work programme from the first day of release from prison. The background to this is the present situation where people leave prison with a release grant of £46 and then have to live for up to three weeks before their claim, having been processed by the jobcentre, comes through. This amendment is intended to prevent that, because it is the most terrible cause of reoffending. However, the comments in Committee dealt with jobseeker’s allowance, and mention was made of universal credit and the ability to use payment on account to cover the gap before a universal credit payment came through. What was not mentioned in Committee was the progress on all the other claims that might be processed or bid for by prisoners. Mention also was made of work being done with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that this was looked at.
My proposal might seem prescriptive but it is based on observation of the cause of considerable misery when people are released. It suggests that the jobcentre staff currently working in every prison should be required to process the applications and entitlements of every prisoner while they are in prison so that proper plans are made. When they leave they would not have to start doing work that could have been done already, and thus, we hope, it will prevent them reoffending, as seems to happen when people find themselves without the means to support themselves for too long before their benefits come through. The purpose of this amendment is therefore to tidy up the discussions that we had in Committee, and to ask the Minister to ensure that the work with the Department for Work and Pensions is in progress.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for continuing to examine the practical difficulties that some ex-prisoners face. We appreciate the difficulties that they may face when trying to resettle in the community and we have taken a number of steps to address these problems.
When the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, withdrew his amendment in Committee, he expressed the hope that the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions would communicate more effectively on this issue. My noble friend Lord McNally wrote to my noble friend Lord Freud and I can give the noble Lord an absolute reassurance that our departments are working very closely to address the gap between release and receipt of benefits.
Prisoners’ needs are already often assessed on reception as part of the sentence plan. New prisoners are specifically asked about benefits by staff at induction and are referred to one of the 140 Jobcentre Plus employment and benefit advisers currently working in prisons. In addition, all prison leavers have their rehabilitation needs reviewed as part of the discharge process only weeks before release. It is this period close to release that is key to meeting resettlement needs, and that is where the Government have invested resources.
The Government are doing a great deal to overcome resettlement barriers and are currently implementing a strong package of measures. The key strategy to take this forward is the data-linking project which is being undertaken by the Ministry of Justice and the DWP. The project shows that more than half of offenders sentenced to custody are claiming benefits immediately prior to their incarceration, and two years after release from prison almost half are claiming out-of-work benefits. This is the scale of the task we face as we seek to make improvements to the process.
However, improvements are there. From 1 March, offenders leaving custody have their jobseeker’s allowance claims processed before they leave. We expect to reach some 30,000 prisoners a year. Jobcentre Plus advisers are rightly in the lead on providing advice and administering benefit claims, but they are working closely with prison staff to facilitate this process, including advice on financial support available prior to release. We believe that this is the right point at which to make assessments for eligibility.
We are also aiming to address the finance gap through our plans for universal credit payments. Under our proposals, an applicant, on leaving prison with a valid claim, can be paid his claim immediately through payment on account in the same way as any other benefit claimant. All of this is intended to help prison leavers get their benefits quickly and help increase their chances of finding work, which is also a key part of the Government’s agenda on reducing reoffending.
The noble Lord’s Amendment 156A would have prisons potentially duplicating the work of Jobcentre Plus. In addition, the process proposed by the amendment would require the Prison Service to conduct sometimes wasted work. A mandatory assessment of all offenders on entering into custody would either be premature—as the work done on entering prison is highly likely to need updating as the sentence continues—or not needed at all, if the personal circumstances of that person do not justify it.
The Government are fully committed to ensuring that ex-prisoners have the support they need to make a successful and productive return to society. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is quite right in his aim in this respect. Our proposals on ex-prisoners’ access to welfare benefits are part of that commitment. I hope that what I have said today reassures the noble Lord and that he will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Just to correct her, I had no intention of duplicating any work; I was hoping that the Jobcentre Plus representative in prison would do the work while in prison so that it did not have to be done in the jobcentre outside prison. So it was early work by the jobcentre—nothing more by the Prison Service. I am very glad to hear that this has happened, and it is useful that, at last, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice have come together, because this is a piece of joint working that could have been done years ago and would have saved a great deal of misery among released prisoners. Rather like the previous amendment, this is something on which the Government can expect to be questioned at fairly regular intervals in the future. Again, in that spirit, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, unfortunately I saw the groupings list yesterday too late, because of the memorable events surrounding the Diamond Jubilee, to be able to do anything about the fact that this amendment had been grouped with those we discussed earlier about restorative justice. I beg the leave of the House to move this amendment at this late hour.
Currently, the Ministry of Justice is embarked on what the Secretary of State has called the “rehabilitation revolution”. Many of us who have been trying for years to suggest ways in which the criminal justice system could better protect the public by reducing the reconviction rate have welcomed this initiative and seen this Bill as an opportunity to help the process by moving amendments, many based on practical experience, which could improve the revolution’s chance of success. So far, however, I have to admit to a double disappointment. The first was that “rehabilitation” disappeared from the original Title. The second was that so many of our suggestions have been resisted and dismissed out of hand, including my proposal that the original Title should be restored.
Since Committee, two things have happened. First, I have been thinking through the relevance of “desistance”, which means abstention from crime by those who previously had engaged in a sustained pattern of offending. I know it is said that the most effective crime-fighting tool is a 30th birthday, but that is not to be taken as justification for doing nothing about rehabilitation until that day. Research with successful desisters shows that they believe that particular staff members who identify what they could do are more valuable than any particular intervention, which demonstrates the importance of motivating and supporting prison and probation staffs and private and voluntary sector organisations that work at the rehabilitation of offenders.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I have been wondering whether I dare quote poetry at this hour, but I think noble Lords deserve it. Whenever I hear the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who I am sure is with us spiritually, I am reminded of these lines from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
“Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!”
Certainly, as I have said before, there is no lack of sympathy with the promotion of the concept of rehabilitation. Indeed, as I have also said before, I believe that those who argue the case for rehabilitation are doing more for victims and more to reduce crime than those to whom the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred earlier today as the “throw away the key brigade”. There is no argument between us. The Ministry of Justice believes in rehabilitation, and a large range of our policies are geared to rehabilitation. However, I think most people will look beyond the Short Title of the Bill and judge the Government by their intentions and performance. As many noble Lords have recognised, the Bill contains key measures for the youth and adult criminal justice systems that will contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders. Therefore, although I would very much like to accept this amendment in many ways, I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is right—I must simply salute, get on with the job and urge him to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, like the Minister, I have to salute and move on. I am very glad for what he said about the essence of rehabilitation because that is hugely important. Even at this late hour, I make no apologies for moving the amendment because it is very important that all that has been said by many noble Lords during the passage of the Bill reflects the heart of what we are trying to do: namely, to secure the rehabilitation of those who end up in the criminal justice system. However, given the reassurance that everyone is trying to do all they can, and given the lateness of the hour, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.