Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, this has not been a happy time for the Home Office. Those who have known it for many years can remember the days when, as a great department of state, its work on crime, crime prevention, law and justice was looked up to throughout the world. Sadly, it would be more difficult to assert that today. We have before us another Home Office Bill, but not one that deals with the many problems that we have regularly highlighted in this House, such as the overuse of custody for vulnerable children and young people, the imposition of anti-social behaviour orders on children with serious health problems and disabilities, or the use of prison to deal quite inappropriately with some of the most needy, sick and sad women in our society. Instead, this Bill gives us more of a Home Office policy direction, which is in my view deeply flawed. We have more centralisation, and erosion of local control and accountability. Many noble Lords will have received this morning, as I did, a letter from the president of ACPO, Mr Ken Jones, who says that what is at stake in this Bill is,"““an unprecedented and seismic shift in the balance of roles and responsibilities””," within the tripartite system of police governance, which has served this country extremely well. It must, he says, be withdrawn. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for his helpful contribution in explaining just what Mr Jones means. This Bill is more of the same in that it gives a range of authorities yet more power over mainly poor families struggling to bring up their children in a difficult environment. It is also more of the same in that it will involve massive reorganisation, and the creation of a new, heavily bureaucratic structure for five important inspectorates on the basis of shaky evidence that this will work, as well as the abolition of a highly respected British institution that is admired throughout the world and seen as a model—something we can all be proud of. I shall concentrate on Parts 3 and 4. Part 3 takes a step further in the Government’s attempt to deal with families with problems through controlling measures and stigmatisation, rather than help. It puts people with few resources at the mercy of authorities—not specialists in the area—that have extensive powers to tell them what they can and cannot do, but few powers to give them access to the special schools, intensive support and counselling, and medical help that they might need. I refer in particular to the powers in Clause 21 to enable a registered social landlord to enter into parenting contracts. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Linklater and Lady Walmsley, have already mentioned, a parenting contact is a substantial intrusion into someone’s life. It requires a parent to attend counselling sessions, and can also require them to exercise control over their children in a specific way. The National Federation of Housing Associations is concerned that its members will be required to take on a role for which they are not qualified, and become the responsible officers supervising these measures, rather than a probation officer, a social worker or a member of a youth offending team. Will housing officers be given this role, and if so what training will they get? More importantly, as they get to know the family and understand its problems, what access will they get to the services the family needs? For example, will they have the power to set up projects along the lines of the excellent one run in Dundee by NCH Action for Children Scotland, which gives dysfunctional families the tools and support they need to sort their problems out themselves, while building their self-respect and self-confidence? This part of the Bill, in particular Clauses 17 and 18, is also of concern in that it continues and develops further the legislative framework within which local authorities are required to operate, based on the Home Office view that it knows better than local authorities how to create a safe environment with a high quality of life and social cohesion. Clause 17(3) requires a ward councillor to respond to a call for action from anyone living or working in the area which they represent on a crime and disorder matter, including anti-social behaviour and behaviour adversely affecting the environment, or a substance misuse matter in that area. Since anti-social behaviour is by definition in the eye of the beholder, and some people see two young black men walking down a street laughing and talking as a threat, have the Government considered the implications of this for race relations, especially given that, since the last local elections, there are, I believe, now 46 ward councillors from racist parties? It is disappointing that the Government have not taken this opportunity to give more control to local authorities by allowing those with a good track record to decide for themselves how to create a safe and happy community by channelling more money through local area agreements. I know a couple of streets in London quite well. They are not through roads, but peaceful streets. They used to display notices for motorists saying, ““Drive with care—play street until sunset””. Children used to play, kick balls about and run up and down chasing each other, enjoying the summer evenings. The older residents had a chance to chat to the children, make friends and so bridge the generation gap. All that is no more. No children are seen or heard because parents are too frightened to let them out in case they are reported. The notices about the play street have come down and the only ones to go up are about a dispersal order, which states that no one under the age of 16 is allowed out after nine o’clock. Is this the reform and modernisation the noble Baroness is looking for? Yet this Bill will give us more of that approach. Finally, I want to comment on the proposals for the amalgamation of inspectorates, an issue already referred to by many noble Lords. Your Lordships might be aware that on 23 May, Honduras and Bolivia ratified the optional protocol to the United Nations convention against torture. This brought the number of ratifications to 20 and thus the convention will come into force on 23 June. The UK Government were the third signatories and the Foreign Office has worked hard to encourage more countries to ratify. I suspect that the Minister was behind that in an earlier incarnation when she worked at the Foreign Office. The optional protocol aims to prevent torture by ensuring that places of detention are inspected by independent bodies. As my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham explained, all ratifying countries need to have in place what is called a ““national preventive mechanism””. We can assume that the Government believe that the Chief Inspectors of Prisons in Scotland, England and Wales will be a major part of that mechanism, yet there are grave doubts about how far the proposed new inspectorate will meet the Government’s commitment to the United Nations. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, has reached the view that to meet the requirements of the optional protocol, the proposals in this Bill about the inspectorate should include the following: a requirement that the prison inspection function is carried out by actual visits to places of detention; a requirement of regularity of visits; stronger guarantees of independence, including the removal of the power of ministerial direction; an express power of unannounced inspection; express power for the inspectors to set their own standards; and an express requirement that prisons inspections be carried out by reference to human rights standards. The Joint Committee concluded that, without these specific guarantees, the absorption of the Prisons Inspectorate into a larger entity,"““would not be compatible with the requirement of the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Torture that there would be independent monitoring of places of detention at the national level””." The committee is also of the view that, without these guarantees, the new arrangements will,"““give rise to a greater risk of breaches of the human rights of prisoners, in particular their rights to life and not to be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment, because they are likely to lead to less effective preventive monitoring in practice””." The committee also said that it considered this essential function would be better protected if the prisons inspectorate retained its present independence from the proposed new inspectorate. No doubt we shall spend more time on this in Committee. We are duty bound to do so after the remarks made on 10 May in the other place by Dominic Grieve. He asked the Speaker to advise this House that the other place had been unable to do its duty to the Bill in relation to Part 4 and to tell us that we need to do,"““an awful lot of work””.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/5/06; col. 430.]" I accept that Ministers have done a great deal to try to allay concerns and I am sure that the Home Office has worked as hard as it can to protect the office of the Chief Inspector of Prisons, but I have to say that I have read everything Ministers have said about the idea of the inspectorate for justice, community safety and custody and still find the arguments for it completely unconvincing. I look forward to the further stages of the Bill.