Criminal Justice: Women

My Lords, I, too, warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, on her most excellent report. In the past couple of days during debates on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, we have had a lot of talk about human rights and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. During that time, I have declined to associate myself with the usual gang of suspects, one of whom is here today in the form of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who has served on that committee. I, too, served on it for a short while and, when I knew that the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, had been charged with this task, it was evident that she would perform it with not just the diligence but the radicalism, combined with good sense, that she brought to the committee during the time I served on it. Therefore, it was a pleasure to read her excellent work. However—the Minister knows that there is always a ““however””—it is a shame that the Government have taken as long as they have to move to its implementation. Since I started shadowing the Ministry of Justice and dealing with prisons, I have discovered that change is the order of the day. The problem is that change seems to be taking place in the absence of strategic leadership and with a decided lack of vision. We heard yesterday on the radio that apparently more than 50 reviews have been ordered since the current Prime Minister took over a few months ago. It would not be entirely surprising if that happened within the first year or two of a new Government. The problem is that it is happening 10 years after they took office, so we must draw our own conclusions. However, on the issue in hand today, perhaps we need to reinvent the wheel—or to improve its alignment to the rest of the cart quite comprehensively. As I said, we welcomed the report for taking an in-the-round look at what needs to be done and we agree with a good number of the recommendations of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. We particularly like her emphasis on tackling the underlying issues to do with vulnerabilities, such as personal circumstances, familial pressure points and socio-economic factors. However, we have a few reservations. One is that we regret that she sees as a linchpin of her strategy the need for interdepartmental committees rather than a more clearly delineated, stand-alone body with sufficient powers, budgets and staff to make things happen. As it is, the interdepartmental group will consist of seven Ministers or so, on whom this additional remit will be tacked on to their existing functions. A point made eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, last week in his debate on this issue, as well as today, is that it will be impossible for these people to do the jobs they are consigned to do well in addition to what they are now charged to do. The noble Baroness, Lady Corston, has tried to reassure us that her honourable friends are up to the job. We have no doubt that they are; the trouble is that they already have a surfeit of jobs. You would have thought that their main jobs, as Solicitor-General, Minister for Equality or Minister for Women, would be sufficiently important in scope and brief for them to need to concentrate on those. It does not sit with the importance that this area deserves to be tacked on the way it is to other roles. We particularly welcome the recommendation for the immediate creation of a commission for women who offend or who are at risk of offending. This, in our view, is critical to that logic of strategic leadership which is needed urgently to knock heads and to make the seven different departments with interests in this area come together. We would prefer, as per the original proposals, to see the commission for women established as a non-departmental public body or within the aegis of the Ministry of Justice, as we now discover it is going to be. We do not wish to be particularly prescriptive about this but suffice it to say it should be located wherever it is able to provide the strongest and most effective direction. We are therefore disappointed that the Government have only gone as far as to accept this recommendation in principle. We now await a cross-departmental criminal justice women’s unit, which will be working with other departments. It will, we are told, monitor progress and then report to the IMG. We fear that this unit will soon become encumbered in minutiae. It will be subsumed to different political priorities and will have as its strategic role a subordinate role—we assume—to the direction of travel prioritised by the ““prison and penal aspects of policy”” brigade rather than the part of the remit which deals with women at risk of offending, which we thought was one of the great innovations in the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. I am aware that we also have the IMG for reducing reoffending, but the organisational chart in the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, on page 79 does not provide for a link to this group. This underpins why we see the commission for women as the place for strategic direction and leadership. Let me turn to the more recent changes for, as we see it, they will have an impact on where and how the recommendations of this report will go forward. We heard last week that the flagship body set up only three years ago, the National Offender Management Service, is now to be dismantled. NOMS, as we recall, was to offer management through prison and probation systems to successful release back into the community. We are told that NOMS will be stripped down and a sort of NOMS-lite will be the more focused body but: "““The concept of end-to-end management for all prisoners will be abandoned as the Government looks to impose cuts across the prison and probation services””." That is from the Observer of 27 January. This will be the third shake-up of prisons and probation services in seven years. We also have the result of the review by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles. While we have seen his report, we are not entirely clear as to how many of his proposals will go forward in the way that he envisaged. We seem to be getting increasingly fragmented responses through IMGs and action plans while one theme remains constant: that Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons continues to highlight the mess that exists in our prison policy. Coming to the fact that we have had two separate debates on women’s justice and prisons in the last two weeks, plus the changes we have seen to NOMS and to prisons and probation services, could we get an indication from the Minister that we will get regular appraisals from the IMGs as to how the changes are bedding down? I am coming to the end of my time but let me briefly say that it is clear from the debates last week and today that there is much good will and concern to address these issues. We heard the plea of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for the noble Lord, Lord Lester, to look at some of these things and I will draw his attention to this debate. We were intrigued by the views of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, on prison design. The physical environment is undoubtedly key to issues to do with humanity’s most basic precepts. I wonder if the architectural competition committee that he envisages could also include prison staff and prisoners, as both would be the most frequent users of the system. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, welcomed the national service framework for women. Is its implementation programme still on target to roll out from June 2008? The debate today has been replete with innovative suggestions to promote life skills such as the emphasis of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on the arts in rehabilitation. These would be the ideal interventions to be funded by the National Lottery. I will support her plea to the Minister. Let me finish with the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, on the need for a royal commission. We are always pleased on these Benches for those on other Benches to be reminded of what true reform can look like, and Gladstone would have much to tell us on this issue today. Given the number of piecemeal studies and proposals for change, if this lot of reforms do not work, maybe we should move to a comprehensive look at crime and punishment through a royal commission. The problem is that the royal commission and anything it achieves will have come nearly a generation too late for those currently incarcerated. That will have been our collective failure as a society.