My Lords, in her foreword to the Strategic Objectives for Female Offenders published last Friday, Helen Grant, the Ministry of Justice Minister responsible for women, wrote:
“The issue of women in prisons is a deeply emotive one, in which there is very genuine interest from Parliamentary colleagues”.
I am sure that the noble Lord, as a member of the Government who purport to be as genuinely interested in the issue of women’s justice as Helen Grant professes, will understand why I say that a number of genuinely interested colleagues are deeply upset that this amendment is coming up at such a late hour, because understandably they and others have had to leave the House. Tragically, this is an all-too-familiar story where women’s justice is concerned, about which we should all feel ashamed.
If the Committee in the other place was genuinely interested, I cannot imagine how it accepted, without debate, the Minister’s assertion that the amendment successfully introduced at Third Reading in this House by my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf—sadly, he cannot be here tonight, as noble Lords have heard—was unnecessary. The amendment sought to obtain much needed statutory protection of measures to ensure that the distinct needs of women offenders were prioritised and met. It was said to be unnecessary because it specifically mentioned probation trusts and, because probation was under review, it did not make sense to legislate on probation provision, and because the Government were already committed to working on women’s provision, the legislation was not needed. The genuinely interested Committee threw out my noble and learned friend’s amendment, denying other genuinely interested colleagues any opportunity of considering it at Report. What a message such treatment sends to those who are encouraged to believe that the Government are genuinely interested in the position of women in the criminal justice system.
If this was the first occasion on which similar dismissal had been the fate of proposals concerning the specific needs of women offenders, it could perhaps be more easily understood. The point about probation is a semantic quibble because, whatever the outcome of the review, someone will be responsible for the provision of services to female offenders. But the point about legislation is important, because the amendment is an attempt to ensure that consistent and continuous action is taken by successive Ministers, rather than a continuation of past practice, which I can best characterise as being seven times bitten and, understandably, eight times shy.
The strategic direction announced by the Minister includes sections on enhanced provision in the community and transforming rehabilitation, with at its heart an advisory board. In principle, I welcome strategic direction, because a strategy is a single aim uniting the contributions of all those concerned. But as this one contains nothing new and is noticeably short on detail, I can best describe it as pretty thin wine. While not against advisory boards per se, I am not happy that the Minister should put so much hope in this one, because boards do not provide leadership or take positive action, and positive action, not yet more advice, is what is so badly needed.
The Minister said that the board had been convened,
“to develop polices to tackle female re-offending, to help women into gainful employment and safe environments, and off the ‘conveyor belt to crime’”.
Of course, nobody could be against such aims, but I am deeply cynical about how they will be implemented and overseen, in view of bitter experiences in the past. Over the past 16 years, I have heard much the same from a succession of Home and Justice Secretaries and Prison and Women’s Ministers and I have seen a plethora of policy, advisory and women’s issues boards set up to develop policies and to help women off the “conveyor belt to crime”, after recommendations made in two thematic reports of mine when I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, a report by the Prison Reform Trust, three reports by the Fawcett Society and finally the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, only for them to disappear without trace. I note that, like its predecessors, this board is expected to,
“take a creative, innovative look at the scope … for improved sentencing options”,
as well as,
“designing the system to ensure that women’s needs and priorities are recognised in the provision of services in the community and through-the-gate of prison”,
and working with partners within and outside the criminal justice system,
“to ensure that the needs and profile of female offenders are recognised and understood”,
while also promoting “community sentencing options”.
Here I make no apologies for repeating what I have said time and again in this House: history, and particularly recent history, proves that nothing will happen until and unless some named person is made responsible and accountable to a Minister for making it happen. As nobody has been appointed in the case of women, virtually nothing has happened.
10.15 pm
Ever since I became involved with the criminal justice system, I have been amazed that Ministers seem so unwilling to look at facts when trying to reason why their good intentions are not realised. If they worked in business, a hospital, a school or local government, they would know that named individuals are responsible and accountable for separate departments, so why, unlike every other operational organisation throughout the world as far as I can discover, do they tolerate continuous failure, for which they can call no one to account, caused in large measure by the almost complete absence of any named individual responsible and accountable for each type of offender in the National Offender Management Service, particularly women, a discrete group with distinct characteristics and needs? If they looked, they would be struck immediately by the marked difference between the consistency and improvement in the high security prisons, under their own director, compared with the remainder, and the way in which the position of children has been transformed by a Youth Justice Board under its own responsible and accountable chairman.
This dreadful track record explains why my noble and learned friend, I and many others seek legislation. In the absence of anyone responsible and accountable
for making consistent improvement, we despair of progress being made and any momentum generated being maintained. Ministers, however well intentioned, come and go. While responsible and accountable to Parliament, they have countless other ministerial, parliamentary and constituency tasks and simply do not have the required time to provide 24/7 oversight of any single part of their ministerial portfolio. Oversight can be provided only by someone responsible and accountable to them, aided by advisory boards or whatever. I challenge anyone to disprove that the one common denominator behind the failure of every previous good intention for improving the position of women is the lack of anyone responsible and accountable to the Minister for implementing it. I would hate to see this one, however thin, go the same way. That is why I disagree with the Commons overturning my noble and learned friend’s amendment.
I have three questions for the Minister. First, why does he not accept the need to appoint a named official to be responsible and accountable to Ministers for women in the criminal justice system? I note that, on 3 October 2012, Sadiq Khan MP, the shadow Justice Minister, announced that Labour would set up a women’s justice board, bringing together central government, local councils, police, probation and social services to tackle female offending, modelled on the Youth Justice Board. When I asked him about what appeared to be a damascene conversion of his party line, bearing in mind how many of his predecessors had vetoed that idea when put forward by the Prison Reform Trust and many others, including me, he said that, coming in as an outsider, he had looked afresh at all the evidence and that its need stood out. I welcome him warmly to the club, as I hope to do the present ministerial team.
Secondly, can the Minister tell the House why, without statutory provision, it should be confident that what the Minister has outlined will come to pass when so many previous but similar intentions have failed? Helen Grant, having recognised the genuine interest of parliamentary colleagues in both Houses and the importance of keeping people informed about what the Government are doing for female offenders, says that she will consider what more she should do, going forward, to communicate with stakeholders and others with an interest in female offenders. I would like to recommend one thing that she could do, which is to undertake that either the Justice Minister or the Minister responsible for women’s justice will make an annual statement to Parliament about progress with the strategy, which will be debated on the Floor of both Houses. Will the Minister give an undertaking that annual statements will be made, or at least considered, and an announcement about them made during the further passage of this Bill? I beg to move.