Police and Justice Bill

I hope that this group of amendments will either persuade the Government to adopt them, or that they will ultimately be carried. I am fortified anew in that view by powerful speeches; not only that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, but also the two speeches that were sympathetic to it from both sides of the House. For the past two decades, the existence of the independent, standalone Chief Inspector of Prisons has been celebrated here at home and greatly admired abroad. The reason is clear: the post and the people who have held it have been able to shine lights into corners where none would otherwise shine and where all too often horrible conditions of ill-treatment have been perpetrated in our name on people deprived of their freedom with no one else to help them. That is why this post and the way in which it has been filled has been celebrated at home and greatly admired abroad. The chief inspectors have gone where they wanted and spoken to whomever they wanted. They reported direct and publicly—which was very important—to the Home Secretary on what they found. In doing so, they have very often been a thorn in the ample flesh of Ministers in successive Governments, which is why I strongly suspect that the Government want to reign them in through the Bill. Of course, Ministers do not put it quite like that. Like other noble Lords, I have been looking at the Government’s policy statement Inspection Reform: Establishing an Inspectorate for Justice, Community Safety and Custody. In the summary on page 3, the Government say: "““A focused, joined up and streamlined inspection regime is needed if inspection is to fulfil its aims and provide the independent scrutiny required by Ministers””." That may be what is required by Ministers, but I judge that that is not what is required by prisoners, those who administer prisons or those who are concerned by their performance. The noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, described the views of the Prison Service. I am not aware that in any of those quarters there has been any call for the activities of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, or his predecessors to be streamlined. It is a frightening choice of words: one streamlines in order to secure a smooth passage and to minimise resistance. As for focus, I do not believe that conditions in prisons are of secondary importance. It is conditions in prisons, not the system—as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has just put it—that require the inspector’s exclusive focus. However much turbulence the announced and unstreamlined arrival of the inspector may occasion, surely we can all agree that prisons are quite different in character from the other 10 inspectorates at present in the public sector and that they always will be. That can be seen from the extraordinary inappropriateness to prisons of the following sentence in the policy statement: "““A single inspectorate will highlight the perspective of the service user by providing a single fulcrum for assurance and improvement in every aspect of their experience of the delivery of the system””." That is a sentence worthy of a prize from a chief inspector of reach-me-down clichés. I do not think that prisoners—whether or not they view themselves as ““service users””—will feel reassured in any significant way by the proposed change to the system that has produced Judge Tumim, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and now Miss Anne Owers as inspectors of courage and gloriously unstreamlined independence. Instead, will they not see—and be right to see—the heavy hand of the Chancellor? After all, it was he who announced in March last year that the Government intended to reduce the public sector inspectorates from 11 to four. Why the Chancellor? Was the Home Secretary not available that day? I respectfully say that the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, was the most devastating that I have yet heard in this House. I trust that the Government will think again.