My Lords, even in this short contribution to today’s debate, it would be churlish not to congratulate the Prime Minister—a man who, not so long ago, I was able to describe in my professional capacity as the defendant—on his victory at the general election. I confess that throughout the last several months I have not always found it easy to be wholly enthusiastic about the policies and conduct of the Conservative Party nor about the people advising it. I have occasionally been reminded of Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarcho-communist, when looking at some of the anarcho-Conservatives who appear to have some influence on the Prime Minister. But there is no getting away from the numbers: the Government won a huge victory and they have now come forward with an ambitious programme for this Parliament. I also congratulate my two noble friends, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Davies of Gower, on their excellent maiden speeches this afternoon and I do so with alacrity. I am sure that we all look forward to their contributing often to our debates.
There is plenty to commend in the Government’s programme, but in my remarks I want briefly to concentrate on that aspect of it that concerns one part of the criminal justice system, namely; prisons. In that regard, I draw attention to my registered interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust.
By chance, Kropotkin said that the test of their success was whether they were answering their purpose in diminishing the number of anti-social acts. In his view, prisons in Tsarist Russia were not doing that. They were universities of crime, breeding places of criminality. My noble and learned friend Lord Keen, in opening this debate, said that the Government’s top priority is the protection of the public, and we can all agree that that must certainly be one of them. He also said that sentences must reflect the seriousness of the crime, and again, he was not being controversial in saying that.
Between 2005 and 2009, when I was the shadow Prisons Minister in the other place, I made a study of our prisons. I visited about 65 of the approximately 140 prisons, young offender institutions and secure training establishments in England and Wales. I found a mixed picture of success and failure. I met prison staff, be they governors, prison officers, teachers, drug rehabilitation and addiction experts or mental health specialists who were utterly dedicated to their work and determined to do all they could to reduce the chances of the prisoners in their care reoffending on release.
I also saw the consequences of prison governors and prisoners being moved from prison to prison far too often so that the first could not lead and develop their prisons positively and the second could not learn
to read and write, deal with their alcohol and drug problems or come to terms with and deal with their crimes and the effects they had on their victims. Huge sums were spent on incarcerating people and achieving very little apart from that. Based on my experiences, I wrote a paper, Prisons with a Purpose, which advocated, among other things, the view that prisons should not be simply places to house criminals for the period of their sentence, nor should they be filled with drug addicts or people with mental health problems who could and should be treated more effectively in secure hospitals. They should be places of improvement but also places where the most violent and dangerous criminals could be kept out of harm’s way for the public’s safety.
I wanted to see prisoners working for wages which could save the welfare budget. Instead of being paid a few pounds a week, prisoners could earn a living wage with the money being held for the benefit of their families or dependants who would otherwise rely on the state for their upkeep. And I wanted to see them doing the sort of work that they might aspire to do when back in society. Seeing work rooms full of grown men sorting red and black plastic wires or making hair nets did not fill me with confidence that they would rush off to apply for those jobs on release. There was no obvious connection between their work and monetary reward. It was mindless, time-filling drudgery, and made reoffending more attractive, not less.
We are now told that under the legislation proposed by the Government—the counterterrorism (sentencing and release) Bill and the sentencing Bill—sentences will get longer. I will not go into the detail of the proposals now nor do I criticise the changing of sentencing law by Parliament, but I ask the Government to think about how this will work. Will what is proposed have a practical and beneficial effect on us as citizens and taxpayers and as the potential or actual victims of crime and on those who are sentenced? Will we see a reduction in crime flowing from this legislation, and can we be assured that what will pass into law will do what is promised? Will those who are given these heavier sentences be made better citizens, more capable of returning to the outside as responsible members of the public prepared to go to work and look after their families and contribute to the national well-being, or will they have to stay inside, unreformed and irremediable at vast public expense?
Will the court system and the Crown Prosecution Service, let alone the police, be ready and able to cope with the additional people they will have to deal with and which the public, by these measures, are being encouraged to believe will be taken off the streets in greater numbers and for longer periods? Above all, will the prison estate be capable of accommodating these prisoners for longer, both in terms of budgetary and human resource? Many of the crown courts have unused court rooms and are in a poor state of repair. The CPS is not working as well as it should and the liaison with the police has always been patchy. The longer or harsher sentence is not a solution that works by itself, so I urge the Government to ensure that, as they pass these Bills, they also will the means within other areas of the criminal justice system to enable the whole system to work well rather than legislating for temporary effect.
7.28 pm