Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 139: Page 24, leave out line 28 and insert ““and Community Safety”” The noble Lord said: I wish to oppose the Motion that Clause 28 stand part of the Bill and to speak to Amendments Nos. 139, 144, 148 to 171 inclusive and to Amendment No. 195. The aim of the amendments is quite simply to strike out the words ““and custody”” and any reference to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons from the Bill, and to try to persuade the Government to think again before committing what I and a number of other Members in all parts of this House and the other House quite honestly regard as a wilful act of extreme folly. I do so against an unfortunate background for a Bill of such importance. I quote from Miss Lynne Featherstone in the other place: "““It is a great tragedy that we did not have time to debate the inspectorates. The changes to the prison inspectorate hold dangers for prisoners in future. That inspectorate casts a light where no light shines through its expertise and independence, both of which will be compromised in a joint inspectorate. The chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, said that it would be a dilution of all the special protection for prisoners. Well trained prison inspectors can spot human rights abuses in a way that will not be possible if the inspectorates are merged. I am sorry that we did not have time to discuss a joint amendment to provide that prisons were not included. Prisoners need special arrangements to protect them.""““Sadly, we are now dependent on the other place to put into the Bill all the proposals that the Government would not accept—amendment after amendment … We tried to work with the Government but all our good work and good intentions were rejected, so it is with a heavy heart that I leave it to the other place to make amends””.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/5/06; col. 435.]" We now come to the making of the amends. I have mentioned before in this House that I find a difficulty in having been Chief Inspector of Prisons, because of the suggestion that I would say what I am going to say anyway. I am not going to do that; I am going to call in support of my amendment the words of other people, because that perhaps is more powerful. In working up to today, I have been absolutely staggered at the size and variety of my postbag and the numbers of people who have telephoned and spoken to me. Three people who I had never met before contacted me on my way to the House today. Last night, it was teachers, governors and parents at a granddaughter’s school. Prison staff, prisoners and many who work in prisons are all asking a very simple question: ““How could they be so stupid?””. What business would throw away its only source of independent and objective quality assurance? As a solider, I honestly cannot comprehend throwing away an internationally recognised asset at a time when the criminal justice system needs all the help that it can get, particularly when that asset is proven and trusted by the public to produce unfudged facts about what is actually happening rather than what people would like to happen. I have said this before but, sadly, the Government’s record of listening to an independent and objective inspection and to the recommendations and advice that it gives is not good. I am somewhat cynical about the protestations in the policy statement. Only recently, all the warnings about foreign national prisoners were ignored, and look what happened. Last week, we had the Feltham inquiry, which again showed that warnings had not been listened to. I just hope that the attempt to put the inspectorate of prisons into a merged group is not a deliberate attempt to silence the inspectorate. The record of the prison inspectorate includes exposing what the Prison Service’s own regulation and audit did not. Sadly, it is followed always by the explanation that since the inspection things are better, so we should not worry. There were pregnant women in chains in Holloway; assaults by prison staff in the segregation unit at Wormwood Scrubs; outrageous behaviour in the segregation unit at Wandsworth; and mental health treatment that was utterly disgraceful in Brixton, to which I brought the director-general so that he could see it for himself and not doubt it. There is a terrible performance by a number of young offenders’ establishments. Most recently, Woodhill prison was so bad that it had to change the governor, who had been meant to be running that prison. So I come to the suggestion that all the talk that everything will become stronger and better under a merger is viewed with considerable cynicism. I ask everyone who is responsible for that policy to make certain that they understand that this proposal is flawed, because it does not come from a deliberate examination of the inspection of the criminal justice system or any suggestion that the prisons inspectorate has failed. It comes from a statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech. The name of the game has been given away in page 22 of the policy statement about the new inspectorate, which states: "““The Government is minded to move to a single inspectorate””." In the Army, we had a phrase, ““situating the appreciation””. It meant that you decided what you were going to do and then you wrote a paper around that, explaining why that was the only suitable course of action. When I examined that policy statement, I discovered that there were eight options, of which only one was chosen. But option 7 is perfectly reasonable—it is to leave things as they are as regards prisons inspection and to merge the other four inspectorates. I can see the value of merging the other four, because they are the inspectorate of the Crown Prosecution Service, the Courts Service, the police and the probation service, and they have to work together on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that their inspections should be put more closely together. However, the inspection of prisons and the treatment and conditions of prisoners have nothing to do with that. When I went on inspections, I used to take with me a team consisting of a psychiatrist, a GP, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, drug treatment specialists, education inspectors from Ofsted and the Adult Learning Inspectorate, social services inspectors—if I went to see juveniles or mother-and-baby units—health and safety and fire inspectors, civil engineers and experts in gardens and farms. Not one was from the Crown Prosecution Service or the courts, and only occasionally did I take people from the probation service, although I worked with them on thematic reviews. I once took a policeman with me when I went to see the work of the RUC in the Maze. I also worked with the DTI’s inspectorate of the security industry in looking at matters to do with private prisons and escort arrangements. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister could say just how she envisages the time of the new deputy chief inspector of justice, community safety and custody working, other than their going on doing what is done now to inspect prisons, as required, and making available from time to time people to do other things, which I did when inspecting social services locations or helping elsewhere—in other words, maintaining the status quo. In Section 52 of the Prison Act 1952, there is already a perfectly good description of how inspections should be carried out and it does not need to be changed. The Act was amended when I took over responsibility for detention and immigration centres. If you want the Chief Inspector of Prisons to take on the inspection of cells in police stations and courts, why not make a simple amendment? It does not need a great merger. It is also of concern that a number of words are being lobbed out—I have mentioned one, which is ““modern””. What does the Minister mean by ““modern””? In her introduction to the policy statement, she states that she wants to have inspections that are ““strongly led””. Does she not think that prisons inspection has been strongly led? She says that she wants it to be ““forward looking””. How can it be more forward-looking? Why has so little attention been paid to the recommendations? I do not know. There is another confusion under the new proposals. Paragraph 265 of the Explanatory Notes says: "““In contract to inspection of a defined list of institutions the Chief Inspector will be under a duty to inspect the operation of certain broadly defined systems””." That is not the purpose of prison inspection; it is all about institutions. Frankly, I am at a loss to say anything other than that the Government were minded to act because of what the Chancellor said, and they wrote a policy statement to satisfy his words, not to satisfy the needs which have been identified for so long. I have spoken only about the inspection of prisons but an almost more serious matter, which I mentioned at Second Reading, is now upon us—that is, our requirement to have an independent monitoring organisation to satisfy the protocol on the prevention of torture, which we have signed. We have come up to the requirement according to all the officials who are responsible for seeing that that independent arrangement is in place. The only place in the world where it is in existence is here, so why are we throwing it away? The report of our own Joint Committee on Human Rights states very clearly: "““In light of the above … the absorption of HM’s Chief Inspector of Prisons into a single criminal justice inspectorate, without the specific guarantees that we have mentioned, would not be compatible with the requirement of the Optional Protocol … that there be independent monitoring of places of detention””." If we have it, why throw it away? We would only have to invent another, and that seems to me utterly pointless. On the same subject, the president of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture has said that the task of inspecting the treatment and conditions of persons deprived of their liberty is of a different order from inspections of other activities carried out in relation to persons not in custody, and that it would be ironic if, at the very time when the world looks to the United Kingdom for a prime example of an independent prison inspection mechanism, the UK were to decide to radically alter this model of good practice. I could go on, but I hope that, when the Minister replies, she does not repeat what people have been saying to me—that this new inspectorate is going to be so much stronger and better. I ask her not to pretend that a deputy chief inspector of justice, community safety and custody, who is subordinate to a chief inspector and to responsible Ministers and government policy, will be stronger and more independent than a standalone chief inspector who is responsible for arranging both content and method of inspection of all those held in custody, with direct access to Ministers and the public whenever he or she requires. There is an old saying in the Army: ““If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it””. I am not speaking about my time but about my admirable successor, who has done, and continues to do, such a wonderful job. It would be an absolute crime to waste something that we have and, in particular, to remove a priceless weapon from the hands of Ministers—that is, independent and objective quality assurance of what goes on now and for which they are responsible. That is why I make no bones about these amendments sweeping away all reference to the prisons inspectorate and recommending that we go back to option 7, while by all means merging the other inspectorates. I beg to move.