Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I am very glad to have been able to add my name to these amendments, and would like to say how much I admire the work of the noble Baroness. It is not simply the utterly sensible amendments that she brings to our deliberations, but all the work she does to follow up what she is arguing for in this House. Of course, that is a two-way process, because it also means that when we listen to her, we listen not just to the voice of theory but to the voice of experience and practical engagement. That is a special asset to have in our deliberations. Punishment is the easy bit. Of course crime must be punished—there is no argument about that—but in a sane society in which reason prevails, the greater challenge is how lives are rebuilt and how, as I said in argument on a previous amendment, we can enable people to become positive citizens contributing to the well-being of society, as distinct from indulging in delinquent behaviour. That is the real challenge. If that is to be done well, it means that those individuals have to be looked at as individuals. I remember talking to a chief superintendent of police who was just about to retire when I was president of the YMCA and he was a prominent and active member of the YMCA in Britain. It was a private conversation, so I hope that he will not mind my relaying what he said. He said: ““You know, it is a very lonely moment when you are sentenced. Some people respond with more bravado, but the overwhelming majority at that moment feel very lonely. I have always felt that where we get it wrong in our penal policy is that that is the very moment when someone should be there at the elbow of the person concerned saying, ‘Isn’t this a terrible mess? How are we going to sort it out and try to make some sense of this situation?’””. What the noble Baroness said was not only emotionally powerful—there is no harm in emotion of the kind she was displaying in her remarks today; it is very healthy, and the passion which she feels for these issues is a great challenge to us all—but so important. So many of the people with whom the penal system is dealing have not had proper relationships, have not had people who cared, have not had families able to cope with or relate to them in their situation. There is a desperate need, as I have said in other debates in this House, for someone to take the hand of the person concerned and walk with them through the experience back into full rehabilitation in society, back into the job to which the noble Baroness referred, which is so central. If that is the case, if we are asking magistrates and others to function on our behalf to tackle those issues, it is imperative that we do everything we can to ensure that magistrates know of all the possibilities which can be considered for the individual in front of them. To have a limited range of possibilities, or not to be very much aware of the range of possibilities, is disastrous because it means that we are not taking seriously the issue of rehabilitation. On the issue of short sentences, I remember on a visit to a prison—in fact, it has happened more than once in conversation with prison officers—the prison officers themselves saying what nonsense it was and asking: ““What on earth are we expected to achieve with these young people? How on earth is this helping them? They are going through a more disruptive experience. They are being taken further away from society and the chance to start rebuilding their lives in detention. What are we doing? What are we expected to be administering on behalf of society?””. If it is a matter to be dealt with by some by awarding a short sentence, there must be other means available which are more constructive and intelligent. I conclude what I want to say in support of the noble Baroness by repeating something which has been said in debates before but which it is not possible to repeat too often. On the door of every cell should be ““Rehabilitation?””—with a question mark after it—because, if we are not achieving rehabilitation, what are we doing? We are losing an individual, and we are almost inevitably ensuring future costs for society not only in terms of reoffending but in terms of the cost of dealing with the consequences of that reoffending, with further spells in prison or whatever. I believe that in the whole culture of our penal system and in the culture of the professions who administer our penal system there should be a passionate commitment to achieving at all costs, wherever possible, the rehabilitation of offenders. That is why these amendments tabled by the noble Baroness are so right. They make economic and social sense, and I hope that they also make sense when we think about what the values of a decent and civilised society should be. I hope that we care about the individual. This morning in my old constituency of Portsmouth, where Dickens was born, I attended a ceremony to mark his 200th birthday. During the service in the great St Mary’s Church in Portsmouth, which was part of the ceremony, I was startled to hear a piece by Dickens himself on the application of Christian values. I had not read it before, to my shame, but I commend it to Members of this House. With his social commitment and understanding, and his brilliance in setting out the issues with which society is confronted, as well as its responsibilities to put them right, Dickens speaks directly about the whole principle that, if we call ourselves Christians, we must commit ourselves to caring not simply for the victim—although of course the victim matters—but for the offender, with a commitment to enabling the offender to sort out his or her life.