My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester for her introduction and Harriet Harman for her amendment in another place; even though it did not progress, it was very important. I am very sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, cannot be in his place today, because his report, which pre-dates the Select Committee report in the Commons—it was published in 2017 and was called The Importance of Strengthening Prisoners’ Family Ties to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime—sparked a lot of this work.
That report emphasised throughout that data was needed on prisoners, their families and their children, particularly the age of the children, because that then enables the right sorts of services to be available inside a prison to support those family links that are so important. The noble Lord is so right that data is critical for ensuring that we—that is, the court system, prison, probation and other services, including Parliament and civil society—understand the impact on both prisoners and their children.
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If engaging with families can reduce reoffending by 39%—the premise on which the report by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, was commissioned—that is an important lesson, but so is the quality of that engagement. I hope that that would be enabled by this amendment.
I hope there is another benefit too: that this data can strengthen specifically the support for children of prisoners. Both Spurgeons and Clink are clear that their lives are turned upside-down by their parents’ imprisonment. We know that the experience of vulnerable groups of children has improved significantly since data was properly collected and shared with multi-disciplinary teams. The examples that I am going to give are not in the Ministry of Justice system.
The first example is that of looked-after children. I know that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester mentioned it and families are rightly very concerned about it because they do not want their
children to go into care. Prior to better collection of data and the disseminating of that data, however, the service offered to looked-after children was haphazard at best and shameful to our country at worst. Things have improved and continue to improve.
The second group is under the Armed Forces covenant, where that data is now provided to schools and local health services, not just for service men and women or veterans but for their children, because their lives, too, are often turned upside-down.
The third group is young carers. Their rights were significantly strengthened in the Children and Families Act 2014. Through those rights, data needed to be collected and shared in order for them to receive the support that they needed, whether from their council, school, doctor or any other agency. I say that because, when you work with young carers, you understand that before data collection, quite often a child’s doctor was the only person who knew anything about them being a young carer. Schools did not understand and, very sadly, that went on right through society. Again, as with the other two examples that I have cited, it is not perfect but it is much better than it used to be.
I hope that the Government will accept that this data must be collected and published, but I also hope that they will ensure that the benefits of disseminating that information will not just help to reduce reoffending, nor just improve the quality of life between prisoners and their families while they are in prison, but will actually make a substantial difference to these children in their broader lives.