Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, the Bill bears resemblances to the proverbial curate’s egg: there are good parts, but the overall taste is not entirely pleasing. I welcome several elements of the Bill. The National Policing Improvement Agency seems like an extremely sensible rationalisation of a confusing mixture of bodies advising, monitoring and assisting the police. It is good to see in a government Bill some sensible deregulation. Removing police authorities from the obligation of best-value reviewing and planning under the Local Government Act 1999 is a relief, for which I am sure they will give much thanks. If that can be done for police authorities, perhaps it can be applied much more widely. No one ever denies the need for best value, but the paraphernalia that surrounds that mantra has not always delivered what it promises. I have to admit that I was once somewhat sceptical about community support officers. It seemed to me that without too much more investment the number of police officers on our streets could have been greatly increased. But I have gradually become convinced that the value of CSOs in neighbourhood policing is related both to their visibility and to their relatively limited powers. Effective policing requires local knowledge and community engagement, and many CSOs have had to use their innate powers of persuasion and human ingenuity rather than quick recourse to the force of law. So when I am told that we need to introduce a standard set of robust powers for CSOs I wonder whether that might undermine the reason for their success. I know the way in which the powers of community support officers have varied from one police force to the next has been hardly sensible, and the Bill clarifies what they are able to do. But I am concerned that the relative success of CSOs is related to the trust that they have engendered through personal contact, knowledge and social confidence. We do not want CSOs so impressed by their new powers that they are too keen to wield them. This leads me to my main concerns about the Bill. There is plausibility about many of its detailed reforms, but the cumulative impact may be far from beneficial. The reforms related to anti-social behaviour seem well intentioned and I recognise that many of them derive from reviews of existing policy. But the itch to legislate repeatedly in this area reveals a frustration that anti-social behaviour is so difficult to combat by means of legislation alone. I sympathise with the aim of giving local councillors, for example, power to trigger a community call to action where it is felt that local crime and anti-social behaviour are not being dealt with adequately and that that should be referred to a crime and disorder scrutiny committee. But it is hard to see how all that would necessarily make things much different on the ground. There is certainly dangerous and intimidating behaviour that needs to be dealt with by the force of law, but much anti-social behaviour that causes distress in communities derives from community irritation with the thoughtless, the perverse, the stupid and the unsocialised. The law cannot entirely replace the self-discipline that derives from our social, spiritual and moral sensibilities. So many of our difficulties in this area derive from deficiencies in those qualities in too many members of our population. That is why we become so frustrated that our best-laid plans in legislation do not always work. Parenting contracts, parenting orders and anti-social behaviour injunctions may all have their place, but I fear that all of us—Bishops included—need to address a deeper moral and spiritual malaise than we sometimes wish to recognise. I look for reassurance from the Minister on conditional cautions. Again it seems extremely sensible to divert low-level offenders who admit their guilt from court and get them to accept relatively modest sanctions, but I have several concerns. In another place, the relevant Minister in Committee estimated that that would affect up to 30,000 cases per year. Is that a figure that the Minister endorses, and if so how is the estimate made? We are also told that this would relate simply to low-level crimes, yet the Magistrates’ Association tells us that the offences for which a conditional caution might be administered could include actual bodily harm, criminal damage, carrying an offensive weapon, burglary and theft. Is that accurate? Such crimes seem far from low-level to me. It also occurs to me and others that the wealthier low-level criminal might welcome a caution and a fine as a lesser punishment to get the offence out of the way. The net impact of that increase in the use of cautions might be both the imposition of punishments without due process and yet indulging some offenders at the same time. Again, I find the principle behind the legislation might be sensible, but I wonder what the net effect would be. The one area where I believe that the Bill is wholly and completely mistaken is in the amalgamation of the existing police, prison, probation, CPS and courts inspectorates into a single body. If my friend, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester, who is also bishop to the prisons, were here, he would make his opposition clear and convincing. He and all my episcopal colleagues are at a residential meeting of Bishops in Leicestershire and I am the only one let out on parole for good behaviour. I know that many of us share a deep concern about the absorption of the prisons inspectorate into that unified body. I recognise from the words of the Minister, who began our debate, that the Government seek to meet their critics by making the function of inspecting custodial institutions distinct and giving it priority, but I fear that that is insufficient to assuage our fears. There will no longer be a Chief Inspector of Prisons with a distinct public profile and a direct line of reporting to the Home Secretary and Parliament. The distinctive priorities and methodology of the prisons inspectorate, dealing with issues of human rights, justice, health and safety and decency within the enclosed institutions, are very likely to be diluted. They are very different from all the other issues that the other inspectorates have to deal with. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, that, despite assurances about robustness and independence, as our Select Committee on the Constitution observed, the new chief inspector of the integrated inspectorate has to,"““give regard to such aspects of government policy as responsible ministers may direct””." That does not make reassuring reading. One of the clearest ways of judging the maturity and civilisation of any society comes to us from ancient Israel. You simply have to look at how society treats its widows, its orphans and its prisoners. The psalmist says:"““Let the sighing of the prisoners come before you””," but we do not always want to hear their sighs. We have been astonishingly well served by successive Chief Inspectors of Prisons in recent years, who have not allowed us to neglect the human dignity of those whom we imprison. Their reports have not been easy reading for successive Governments, or for the rest of us. Last year’s description of the conditions in the Victorian section of Norwich prison was, in my experience, accurate, focused and deeply disturbing. We need such disturbance and I hope that the Government will think again.