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Prisons

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Prison Reform Trust. In all of our troubled public sector, the prison system is in the greatest disarray and danger. I therefore warmly welcome the decision of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and his ability to prompt this debate. In all our debates on the public sector, the prisons come off worst for the reason that the noble Lord gave. Political leaders are prompted by the media to compete for encouraging severer sentences on the assumption, which must be fallacious, that the fuller our prisons, the happier and safer our society. For that reason, I support the idea of a royal commission which should not be put forward lightly but, in the present state of the political debate, is necessary. Jack Straw suggested last July, almost a year ago, that there should be a national conversation on the use of prisons. A royal commission would help to inform and guide that debate. The dangerous facts are well established. The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, mentioned the dangers of overcrowding. People will always argue the extent to which prison does or does not work. What is certain is that prison cannot work in the present overcrowded system which diminishes and, in many cases, destroys the chances of rehabilitation. A prisoner who is also a prisoner of a drug habit, or who cannot read or write or do elementary mathematics, or who suffers from some form of mental illness, will find no remedy in a prison where the staff are constantly scurrying about looking for prison space and where two men are held in a cell designed for one, or three men are in a cell designed for two. All of the possibilities for rehabilitation, which we all know exist, disappear to vanishing point in those circumstances. The saddest indicator of that, as the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, mentioned, is the suicides in prison, of which there were 92 last year—an increase—half of which involved prisoners on remand who had not been convicted of any crime. This is a Cross-Bench debate and no one in their senses would blame the Government for this state of affairs in its entirety, but one or two points need to be made. We have had a flood of legislation, a sort of frothy uneven torrent, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said. Some of it has been good and some of it was bad; some of it repaired legislation that was passed by the same Government previously. There has been a great deal of fidgeting about with administration. I had never thought that salvation lay in changing the labels on officials’ doors, but a lot of that has gone on. It has happened with NOMS and in the creation of the Ministry of Justice. There is always a case for putting different functions together under one roof, but you often create a new division as you heal an old one. That is exactly what has happened under the new system in which prisons have been brought together with the courts, but the prisons are separated from the police. One specific matter has not been mentioned. The position of prisons Minister ought to be important in this system. We have had eight prisons Ministers in 10 years. This is a frivolous and indefensible way of running a Government. We are at the end of June and already the commentators are beginning to speculate about a July reshuffle by a Government who are in some difficulty. That causes a frisson in the Westminster village, but it is a hell of a way to run a country. This kind of frivolous merry-go-round should be brought to an end. In conclusion, I wish to say a word about Titan prisons. The Government have said a little more, but now let us have a little more information. Titan prisons are not going to be quite as big as was originally thought. I worry about the culture of big prisons, the culture of the gang, of drug abuse, of threats, of exploitation and of the ever more limited engagement of the staff with individual inmates. I hope the Minister will reply on that. I would much prefer the concept that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, before him, advocated of community prisons. I wish to quote another advocacy which reflects that well. "““We should aim to provide good local community prisons which allow individuals to maintain family and community ties and have the ability to provide excellent support and interventions … I see these prisons becoming far more engaged with their local communities and better at building relationships with a wide variety of other organisations””," so that such prisons, "““become a vital part in the civic fabric of every locality””." That was Mr Charles Clarke lecturing the Prison Reform Trust in September 2005 during a short epoch which, if I may say this without causing trouble, marked the high watermark of enlightenment on prison matters for this Administration. I will end on that point, although there are many points that one could make, because the debate is limited in time. I have been given the impression over and over again by so many individuals and small groups involved in the prison system—locally, on a slightly larger scale and nationally; in this House, but overwhelmingly among volunteer organisations up and down the country—that the contrast between the enthusiasm and imagination which those groups show and the rather weary and battered approach of the policy makers in this field, under the political media pressures that I described, can be brought to an end and that imagination and hard-headed sensitivity can be brought to bear on finding answers. A royal commission could help us to do that.