Police and Justice Bill

Briefly, I support Amendments Nos. 148 and 149 in particular, and what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. Placing five inspectorates under one umbrella is foolhardy, to say the least. Today, however, I shall speak only of the prison inspectorate, covered by these amendments. The inspectorate of the Prison Service is vital to the criminal justice system. What else has brought what is wrong in our prisons to our attention over the years, as well as what is right? The current prison inspector, Anne Owers, has exposed some realties of prison life, warts and all. She is an independent specialist. If this inspectorate is subsumed into others, that specialism will inevitably be diminished, as will future inspections and the respect for human rights the inspectorate upholds. In another place, my honourable friend Hazel Blears, when a Home Office Minister, said: "““we have given an undertaking that we will not abolish the role of the prisons inspector until we are satisfied that the new combined inspectorate can deal with such issues properly””.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/06; cols 690-91.]" That day will never come. Finally, I consulted the Prison Officers’ Association, which represents prison officers and others in prison establishments, on these proposals. One might think that it would welcome its inspectorate being diminished, but it does not. Their general secretary, Brian Caton, wants to continue working with Anne Owers as he does now, to ensure that outrages, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, do not occur in our prisons in the future.