Offender Management Bill

I support the noble Lord and pay him an unreserved tribute. He has brought very special qualities to public life in Britain and we would all be the worse without him. His intellectual integrity speaks for itself. His relentless—if I may be forgiven for using that word—logic and analysis is invariably challenging. I do not often try to make forecasts about history—my wife is a historian and gets worried if I even start to talk about history. However, I really do believe that the noble Lord’s contribution to the progress of this Bill and his other contributions on penal policy will together prove to be a landmark in the deliberations on penal policy in this country. We all owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for what he did as Chief Inspector of Prisons. He did not just lay down the mantle when his time was up; he picked up his experience as a weapon to fight for what he believed to be right and necessary. I also take this opportunity to pay a warm tribute to my noble friends on the Front Bench. They have, yet again, shown exemplary courtesy, patience and thoroughness in all that they have endeavouredto do in responding to our deliberations. I wish sometimes—perhaps not just sometimes—that they had given more ground, but their thoroughness and their commitment to ensuring that all our arguments received proper and full replies could not be bettered. However, I want to explain now why there is another amendment following in my name; I assure the House that, whatever happens to this amendment, I do not now intend to pursue mine. In thanking my noble friends, I wanted to make a point that follows on from what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has just said. We are talking about important and significant developments in the administration of penal policy. I am perplexed. At a time when we have seen it necessary to make a major reorganisation in government—in which the Home Office is to be divided into two separate ministries, each with its own Cabinet Minister—and the new Ministry of Justice is to have responsibility for everything discussed in this debate, I am perplexed that the Minister of Justice did not take the Bill and carry it forward. We had the presence of one of the Ministers from the Ministry of Justice today, but the Ministers of the Ministry of Justice would have done well to be here to hear all the debates, deliberations, analyses, arguments and concerns. In my experience of administration, which has been in very different spheres, to make a success of it, there has to be an intellectual and ethical ownership of what it has been decided should be administered. We are left with a question mark as to how far the new Ministry of Justice feels that it owns the Bill and is responsible for it. That is why in my amendment I wanted to emphasise the importance of the Ministry of Justice. Again, I do not want to be offensive to my noble friends, because they have done a terrific job. I know that they will not for a moment believe that I have anything but admiration for them. However, this situation is strange. As we said in earlier deliberations in Committee, the arrangements are not there as ends in themselves, but to enable us to fulfil objectives. Therefore, there has to be a very real look at what the total objectives are. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, clearly went through—in a sort of revision course—the issues that had emerged in Committee with great agreement from all sides. He will forgive me, because he has heard how highly I think of what he has been doing, but I was a little disappointed that he did not pick out one salient point. Perhaps it is just my subjective commitment, but I thought that one of the fundamental commitments of all of us in Committee—from whatever party and even on the Government Front Bench—was the rehabilitation of the offender. That makes economic sense. It is foolish not to succeed with the rehabilitation of offenders, because of the future costs of reoffending and all that goes with it, not to mention the pain and social cost of the crimes committed. In a decent, civilised community none of us should want to leave a stone unturned in the battle to ensure that as many people as possible can become decent, positive citizens, as distinct from people trapped in a self-destructive, stunted kind of life. We know, sadly, that too much of our current penal policy reinforces the stunted life to which I refer. This amendment and the way in which it has been moved have been tremendously important. I am not sure whether at this hour the noble Lord will want to press it to a vote. Perhaps that would be unwise, but I think that he has been right to make the points as powerfully as he has. With regard to all the dedicated people who have worked on the Bill, the noble Lord mentioned the Public Bill Office, which is great, and of course our own servants in this House are fantastic. However, I think that we are inclined to take for granted all the civil servants out there who work unsocial hours to tie in with the processes by which we deliberate in this House, so we also want to thank all the dedicated civil servants who have been working on the Bill. I believe that we will only be ready for the future if, at this moment all over the Ministry of Justice, civil servants and Ministers are waiting for the next copy of Hansard to read what was said in the debate. They should be waiting to see what issues were raised and what they want to take into account as they approach the moment of fulfilment and administration of the Bill as the necessary legislation for the future, however inadequate it may be—and I agree with most of what the noble Lord said about its inadequacy. I thank the noble Lord for introducing the amendment. I assure the Committee that I shall not pursue mine, but I ask my noble friends, in the same spirit that they have shown throughout the Bill, to take very seriously what he has said.