What I mean simply is that the noble Baroness, doubtless with the best possible intention, is using simplistic language to categorise the Government’s legislative approach, which language I do not accept.
On the subject of the holistic approach—if I may put it like that—which was urged upon us by the noble Lord, Lord German, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, it is indeed important that we acknowledge the funding the Government are making available to provide just such an approach. Our December Prisons Strategy White Paper set out plans to reduce reoffending and protect the public. We will spend £200 million a year by 2024-25 to improve prison leavers’ access to
accommodation, employment support and substance misuse treatment, and for further measures for early intervention to tackle youth offending. We will make permanent the additional £155 million per year provided in the years 2019-20 for a new unified probation service to support rehabilitation and improve public protection, which will be a 15% increase on 2019-20 funding. This expands upon our Beating Crime Plan, which was published in July, setting out how we will cut crime and seek to bring criminals more swiftly to justice, reduce reoffending and protect the public. That included new commitments to recruit 1,000 prison leavers into the Civil Service by 2023, to expand our use of electronic monitoring and to trial the use of alcohol tags on prison leavers.
In addition, in January, a £50 million investment was made by the Ministry of Justice to enhance the department’s approved premises to provide temporary basic accommodation for prison leavers to keep them off the streets, and to test innovative new approaches to improve resettlement outcomes for prisoners before and after they were released. Then there is £20 million for a prison leavers’ project to test new ways to prepare offenders for life on the outside and ensure that they do not resume criminal lifestyles, and £80 million for the Department of Health and Social Care to expand drug treatment services in England to support prison leavers with substance misuse issues, divert offenders, make effective community sentences and reduce drug-related crime and deaths.
For the reasons I have outlined, including the overwhelming notion that these questions are not simplistic and we cannot simply move forward without the necessary evidence, as well as the assertion that an appropriate consultation is under way, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.