Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention to my speech. Obviously, I will go back and talk to my honourable friend about that issue. My understanding is—and I did not think it was arguable—that last year the number of women in prison actually fell by 3 per cent. If that were so, I am sure that that is something that the noble Lord, above anyone, would be pleased about. I was talking about community punishment and community sentences. We believe that a tough community punishment can often be much more effective in turning people away from a life of crime. It can allow more direct and visible ways to pay back to a victim and community and gives offenders a chance to turn their lives around. That is why we expanded community punishment from 140,000 sentences in 1997 to 195,000 by 2007. The different requirements for community sentence allow the courts to make offenders confront their specific problems, be they drug or alcohol abuse, or mental health and behavioural issues. A central purpose of community orders is, of course, punishment itself, through such penalties as community payback, curfews or banning orders. Moving back to the background to the noble Lord’s Bill, it reflects, as he told us, the proposals for reform published by the Government in 2003 and based on the recommendations of the review Breaking the Circle. However, that report was a creature of its time and we must think carefully about whether those proposals continue to strike the right balance between the resettlement of offenders and public protection. I take the point that the Government’s commitment in this area is now six years old, but we have been far from idle in the mean time. Much has happened which has been a more immediate priority, particularly in relation to public protection and the needs of victims, and which has had a bearing on how and when the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act might be reformed. Many of the changes that we have made since 2003 are still working through. First, the Bichard inquiry was set up in 2003 to look at the manner in which the police handled intelligence about Ian Huntley’s past and the vetting process which ultimately led to his employment at a local school. The report made a number of recommendations relating to data retention and sharing, and about extending enhanced disclosures to more people who work with the vulnerable. Our response was to bring forward a major new piece of legislation which went through this House, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, to strengthen public protection for the vulnerable. This has an impact on the scope of CRB checks for employment purposes and has led to the establishment of the Independent Safeguarding Authority to operate a new vetting and barring scheme to prevent an individual working with vulnerable groups when there is a known reason why they may pose a risk to children or vulnerable adults. This scheme has only just come into force in relation to regulated activity. As with any new scheme, there are some teething problems and issues have arisen on the scope and interpretation of the legislation. Sir Roger Singleton, the chairman of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, has been asked to look again at the scheme to make sure that the right balance has been struck on how many people are covered—that is, who will be required to register with the ISA. His recommendations are due to be published on Monday 14 December and may impact on who is required to have a CRB check and, therefore, who may or may not benefit from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The ISA, by its nature, will bring an independent, objective and consistent approach to the employment of ex-offenders in jobs where there is direct contact with children and vulnerable adults. The guidelines on making barring decisions require the ISA to take into account relevant offending history. Therefore, the creation of the authority will contribute to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act’s aims of ensuring that ex-offenders are not discriminated against when seeking employment on the grounds of irrelevant offending history. We shall need to see this fully in operation to assess what changes might now be required to the Act. Since 2003 we have also seen fundamental changes in sentencing policy and practice. This includes a new adult sentencing framework in 2005 and wholesale changes to the youth justice sentencing framework. It is important that all these new reforms are taken into account when looking at the Act. It is not sufficient merely to rest on what has gone before. Lastly, the Government have also been concentrating since 2003 on the need to put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system. Any reform of the Act needs to be subject to full consultation, particularly to take account of the views of victims. In view of all those developments, the Government would need to take a fresh look at the Act in the round and what might be best considered in the current context rather than what was considered appropriate in 2003. There are some technical deficiencies with the Bill; the noble Lord himself would be the first to say so. For example, not all sentences are covered by its provisions. One important omission is the need to consider the position of new indeterminate sentences. That was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, who has strong and definite views on those sentences, but they exist—they are in law. If there were to be such a change, there would have to be some way of dealing with them and we agree with him that Clause 1(9) may not be the most appropriate method. We made imprisonment for public protection available to the courts to deal with dangerous offenders who are considered to present a significant risk to the public through the commission of further serious offences. Frankly, it would be anomalous to go forward with any reform that took no account of indeterminate sentences whatever. I doubt that anyone would disagree that such sentences should never be regarded as spent; were it to be otherwise the offenders in, for example, the Baby P case could see their record wiped clean at some point. Also, the Bill does not take sufficient account of the position with regard to Scotland. Amendment of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is a devolved issue. However, it would be desirable to continue to have similar schemes on both sides of the border. Therefore, we need a dialogue with Scotland on the way forward. That would be appropriate rather than pressing ahead with a Bill that would create a somewhat different regime here in England and Wales from that in Scotland. I am sorry that I shall disappoint the noble Lord in saying that we have some reservations about the Bill, for the reasons that I have given. Of course the Government will neither support nor oppose the Bill on Second Reading; we rarely do so as far as Private Members’ Bills are concerned. I hope that he will accept that the Government are grateful for his giving the House the chance to have this debate by having put forward the Bill. However, much more work needs to be done to look at the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in the round before we move to legislation.