Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, if, like me, you are interested in penal affairs, and in particular in the protection of the public by the successful rehabilitation of offenders, you are inevitably drawn into membership of a very wide number of adjacent hunts. First, and in line with the famous, but sadly disregarded, statement of the former Prime Minister, you must take account not just of crime but of the causes of crime, which, as we all know, are all around us in society: poverty, unemployment, homelessness, ill health, social neglect, and so on. Then you are interested in all those things that prevent people leading law-abiding and useful lives in the community—lack of education, lack of job skills, lack of social skills, mental and physical ill health and substance abuse—and how they might be overcome. Then, of course, you are interested in the treatment of and conditions for people serving sentences, both in prison and in the community, and the provision that is made for rectifying the deficiencies that have prevented them living responsible lives thus far. That leads on to their transition back into the community. Among all that, you are interested in the treatment of and conditions for individual vulnerable groups and their particular routes into, passage through and exit from the criminal justice system—women, children and young people, the elderly, the mentally disordered, the disabled, foreign nationals, and so on. Looked at like that, I hope that your Lordships will understand why I make such frequent reference to the need for an overall strategy covering how all these aspects and problems should be tackled, not forgetting the leadership and professional development of those whom the state employs to deliver the many and varied services that the management of penal affairs requires. In that connection, I was once challenged by a senior official in the Home Office who said that she wished that I would stop banging on about strategy. She said, "We don’t need strategy; all we need is strategic direction". When I asked what she meant, she replied, "Top down, of course". I then told her that that approach of automatically responding to top-down ministerial direction without relating it to either an overall strategy or testing it against common sense was precisely why so much was wrong with how government was currently being conducted. In particular, people needed to consider the amount of legislation being introduced because inevitably it resulted in an increase in bureaucracy that impacted on those responsible for day-to-day contact with offenders, and potential offenders, by deflecting them from their main purpose. I suspect that, like mine, your Lordships’ desks are cluttered with Explanatory Notes, legislative scrutinies and countless briefs, let alone Bills such as the Coroners and Justice Bill, the Welfare Reform Bill, the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill and now the Policing and Crime Bill, not to mention the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill, whose return from the other place we await, and the vast Equality Bill, which has yet to arrive. That is all on top of a vast amount of previous legislation on the same subjects in the context of a Government and Parliament with a finite life, quite apart from the local difficulties which both are currently facing. As a young officer, I was brought up to ask myself and others, the question "So what?" when considering any proposed course of action. Because that process is now ingrained in me, one of the first things I do is to consider the impact assessment of a Bill in the hope that Ministers will have demanded that their officials conduct a detailed "so what?" of each clause and schedule. I have to admit, however, that more often than not, I am acutely disappointed because what I find—going back to my conversation with the Home Office civil servant—is not so much a "so what?" of the implications on those on the receiving end of legislation, including those responsible for actually doing the work required, but rather a statement by Ministers that what is proposed is the only way of doing something. In the case of the mountain of legislation currently on noble Lords’ desks, and in the context of strategy, I have to question whether anyone in any of the ministries concerned has done a "so what?" on the implications of its Bills or any others being put forward by other ministries. This is, of course, what should happen if overarching strategies were in place, because everyone involved would be aware of their role and their required contribution. But, as is so apparent in what we now have before us, that cannot happen in an environment of disconnected individual top-down directions. Let me give two examples of what I mean. For some months now, the Government have encouraged us to await the excellent report of the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, on the diversion of those suffering from mental health problems or learning disabilities from prison to other services. Because the process of diversion starts in police stations, I would have expected something to be included in the Policing and Crime Bill. But no, mental health is a Department of Health not a Home Office responsibility, although nothing was said about diversion in the recent health and social care legislation. Because courts are the other point of diversion, I would then have expected something in the catch-all Coroners and Justice Bill. But no. In fact the only way in which those of us who are concerned about this issue can raise it in current legislation is in the context of the Welfare Reform Bill, led by the Department for Work and Pensions, in the context of the conditionality of benefits to those suffering from such problems. Secondly, the Welfare Reform Bill also includes conditions on benefits for drug addicts attending for treatment, but there are simply not enough treatment centres or workers available to treat all those affected. Again, no provision to increase the number was made in the recent health and social care legislation. As for the Ministry of Justice, 80 per cent of those under probation supervision are substance misusers and the probation service warns that, if denied benefits, they will turn to crime to survive. Those awarded community sentences are unlikely to receive the required supervision because of cuts in the probation service, and many will therefore end up in prison. The Government have introduced 1,036 new imprisonable offences, resulting in inevitable overcrowding in the prison system. They are reducing the availability of courses, including drug treatment, and the Treasury is now imposing severe cuts on both the probation and Prison Service. Meanwhile, with regard to the apprehension of defaulters, and therefore the Home Office, we learn that the chief constable of Surrey has been forced to cut 50 key operational posts, on top of the 144 he was required to cut last year, following direction from the Local Government Minister that the Surrey Police Authority would have to set a lower council tax. So Surrey’s ability to deal with the impact of a direction from the Department for Work and Pensions is undermined by the Treasury, the Department of Health and the Ministry of Justice. Surely all this should have been thought through before being included in legislation. All this frenetic legislative activity would not be so bad if noble Lords could be assured that new legislation came to this House properly scrutinised in the other place. But that simply is not happening. My noble friend Lord Neill pointed out on Second Reading of the Coroners and Justice Bill that, as a revising and not a legislating Chamber, we were being asked to act unconstitutionally. Bearing in mind the 17 days that the Marine and Coastal Access Bill will have occupied before its passage through the House is complete, and the number of days work that will be required by the size and complexity of the Bills currently before us, I wonder whether there ever was the slightest possibility that they would receive the essential scrutiny and revision in the time available in either House. In an ideal world I wonder whether the Government might not consider withdrawing them all for strategic scrutiny, putting what could be implemented without impacting on others into separate Bills, and reserving the rest until their mutual impact had been properly assessed. In that way, they could avoid dropping parts, such as the prostitution clauses, which are back with us, albeit with clauses dropped from what we were denied considering previously. Considering all that, I reflected on the life cycle of the bamboo. Noble Lords will know that it flowers only once in its life, just before it dies, when it explodes its seeds as far as its energy allows in the hope that some of them will germinate. I put it to you that what we have before us is a bamboo-like explosion of legislation from a dying Government who hope that some of it may take root before the seeds themselves die. Other noble Lords have already spoken far more eloquently than me on parts of this Bill in which I have an interest. I shall want to join in the challenge to some of the clauses on prostitution, quoting the experiences of a remarkable young woman, Laura Seebohm, who is running a drop-in centre as part of a support service for women involved in prostitution in Newcastle upon Tyne. This has evolved into a wider support service for vulnerable women, including those in prison, in partnership with other organisations and part-funded by the Ministry of Justice. I wonder whether the Home Office has taken that kind of initiative into account when introducing its impractical supervision plans. I shall also want to focus on the extradition of foreign national prisoners from this country and British nationals serving sentences abroad. I shall be drawing on the marvellous work of the charity, Prisoners Abroad, the only organisation in the country working in this field, which helps 1,600 UK national prisoners per year, meeting the 300 who arrive on deportation, and catering for their basic needs, such as food, clothing and housing, as well as arranging for social security benefits. It also maintains contact with 700 families of those serving sentences abroad, and yet the Ministry of Justice has warned that, in the interests of contestability, the funding of this unique operation is at risk because a required competition exercise must be conducted. Competition with whom? I submit that that is yet another example of a failure to think through legislation before enactment. I look forward to contributing in any way that I can to the passage of this vast Bill—although not of course all its parts. I realise that it is unlikely that the words of a humble Cross-Bencher will resonate in the corridors of power, but I ask the Minister to try to impress on his colleagues in government that a little bit of military or naval discipline on the introduction of legislation would not come amiss. In particular, I suspect that it would be welcomed by those on whom it impacts most: those who have to enact and act on all that the Policing and Crime Bill entails.