Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I support the amendment. I served on the board of visitors of a young offender institution, now a monitoring board, for 27 years. During that time I was often given disabled inmates. They had all sorts of disabilities; I remember two severely deaf boys, blind inmates, people who had cerebral palsy, and of course there were those with mental health problems—they are in every single prison in the country. Also, sadly, we had one young man who had asthma. He told the prison officers that he thought he was going to die, and they did not believe him. The young man died. It was tragic; he was a young lad of 17. I have visited many different prisons and young offender institutions. Like my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, I once visited HMYOI Onley, but for a different reason: the institution was running a project where the young men were helping young people with mental problems who came in and used their gym. That was very good, because they were doing something to help other people. That, I feel, is rehabilitation. At that institution was a young man who was paraplegic. He had committed a serious offence. He was housed in the hospital wing because of space, but the prison officers wanted to integrate him on a wing. He wrote to me and rang me because he was desperate. He was put in a cell but could not turn his wheelchair because the room was too narrow. In the end, he had to go back to the hospital wing, because there is always more space there, but the people there are not integrated into the whole prison. A lot should be done. I am a member of the All-Party Group on Prison Health here in Parliament. We look at health problems and visit various prisons. Last year, we went to Leeds prison, which has become a sort of dumping ground for disabled people for the north of England because it has some facilities for them. That prison had a tetraplegic—someone paralysed from the neck down—who also had a problem with his leg, and he had MRSA. There were many other prisoners with different disabilities who were causing the prison a lot of difficulties. They needed a special bed for the tetraplegic inmate, and they had managed to get one. Maybe, now that the NHS is looking after health problems in prisons, the situation will get better, but disability is often right down at the bottom of the list. When I served in the Yorkshire health region, I was always having to remind people about disability needs: people forget. Provision in the Bill is therefore necessary. I hope the noble and learned Baroness the Lord Chancellor—I am sorry, the Attorney-General, the appointment on which I congratulated her yesterday—will be able to do something. We were told that a report was being done by a Minister in the other place, but he has probably moved on now. Someone must take that up and carry on. Disability covers a wide variety of people throughout the country. I hope she will take this seriously.