Offender Management Bill

I warmly support the amendment in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. I cannot imagine that the Minister will not also support it. I think it is right to say that the Government have put out a number of recent reports making it clear that their view is that mentally ill people should not be imprisoned, and that they would like to find a way of removing them from prison. This is in no way controversial. Having mentally ill people in prison is grossly dysfunctional both for them, because they get more ill, and for the system. It makes huge demands on resources by filling up prison beds that are not really available, while the staff are clearly not trained to deal with mentally ill people. It is also wrong, and could be described as cruel and inhumane, to put somebody who is ill in a place of punishment. Why are mental health diversion projects not everywhere? They are not in the least controversial. Such schemes have run successfully for many years and in many places. There are people who know well how to do them, police stations where they have been running for years and a number of courts that had them, in the past, as a feature of what they could offer. We would have expected this Government to have accepted this sort of project and to have put it in place many years ago. The case for it is unanswerable, and I am happy to support the amendment.