Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, we will discuss the detail of how direct access will be effected but our intent is that the person who undertakes those inspections will have strengthened rather than reduced powers compared with the current powers. The noble Lord will also be aware that the current inspector does not have an opportunity to look at the wider issues. For instance, issues that have come up repeatedly in inspections are whether the correct people are in fact currently in prison, whether imprisonment is appropriate for them and so on. With end-to-end offender management, the new inspectorate will be better able to respond to such issues than is possible with the current, silo-based inspections. I could use the word ““further””, but one of the advantages of joining up the system is that it becomes a system and not, as it has been hitherto, a series of guttural stops that are disjointed and do not help to develop and deliver the synergy and outcomes that we seek. We think that that can be delivered in future. The special duty stands apart from the chief inspector’s other duties and will demand permanent dedication of ample resources and attention by the chief inspector as a result. The prisons inspectorate does not inspect the Prison Service; that assertion was made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. It does so indirectly through the supervision of prisons because the prison inspector is able to see how the Prison Service discharges its duty and thereby is able to inspect. Concerns were raised about the powers of direction with respect to government policy but that will not restrict the ability of the chief inspector to set criteria in the way that we have just described. We are in no doubt that the inspectorate will continue to fulfil the role of the prison inspectorate in meeting the UK’s international human rights obligations under, in particular, the optional protocol.  We are also clear that the Chief Inspector for Justice, Community Safety and Custody will have a special duty to report on the treatment and conditions of those in prison and will, by virtue of a remit that embraces the justice system as a whole, be a more powerful public presence than is currently the case. We say that this is a strengthening and not a reduction. The wording of the powers of direction was agreed with the prisons inspectorate on the basis that it cannot, as I have made clear, prevent the inspectorate setting its own criteria or the chief inspector criticising. In saying that, I hope that I have satisfied the noble Baroness, Lady Stern. I absolutely accept that when we look at the detail of this in Committee, there will be a proper opportunity for us to scrutinise how this will work in practice. I turn finally to extradition. I am very much aware that this issue has excited a lot of attention and that we have not had the swift implementation in the United States that we had anticipated. I assure noble Lords that active discussions have continued in that regard. The noble Lord, Lord Hurd, strongly expressed his anxiety about the working of the US-UK extradition arrangements. However, his anxiety is not based on the facts as they have turned out to be. The majority of extradition requests from the United States are not for white-collar crimes; such crimes are a small minority of those for which extradition is requested. They are and always have been requests for people accused of financial crimes, but very few of them can be characterised as white-collar crime—crimes committed against one’s employer. The Bill’s provisions are the small, technical provisions that I have mentioned and they are absolutely necessary. I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, proposes to treat this like a passing bus on to which she can jump; I am sure that we can deal with such joyriding in an appropriate manner. I look forward to discussing this Bill in all its detail, with all its difficulties and with a full panoply, in Committee and during its latter stages. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.