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Justice: Reform of Punishment, Rehabilitation, Sentencing and Legal Aid

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his response. I will try to deal with the issues that he raised. I suppose that the first point to make is that moral outrage butters no parsnips. The issue that the Ministry of Justice was faced with, as were the Government, was that we were spending beyond our means. We had to accept, as part of the spending review necessary to repair this country’s economy, a cut. I hear a groan from across the Floor, but it is no use opposition Members pretending that if they had won the election they would not have had to come into office to face some of the realities that we have faced, including having to make cuts in some areas. We can all enjoy being in office in good times; it is in difficult times that the necessary and hard decisions have to be made in government. We were faced with cutting our expenditure from £10 billion to £8 billion. Noble Lords opposite will know very well that this department really only has four big tickets; it spends on prisons, on probation, on legal aid and on staff and court services. Each of those has had to take some very difficult hits. To take the points made, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor made clear, the decision on the 50 per cent discount change was as a result of consultation and discussion within government—something that is very common in coming to a final decision. As was indicated, there was quite a weight of opinion from the judiciary, as the Lord Chancellor made very clear in his Statement, that this was a bridge too far as far as discounts were concerned, despite some attractive possible savings and some impact. It is the truth that early pleas have a beneficial effect on victims, and some victims are spared the trauma of going through a trial. But the weight of advice was that such a discount offered to certain offenders would be unacceptable to the public and judiciary. We listened and we changed the proposal that was in the Green Paper. That is what Green Papers are for; I am old enough to remember Harold Wilson introducing Green Papers to allow a period of more flexible discussion than White Papers provided. On changing the name of the Bill to include punishment of offenders, it is partly a presentational matter, but one that I do not think we should ignore. I am very eager that we win the discussion in this country about prison reform and rehabilitation of offenders, but we will not win that debate if the public at large believe that the proposals that we are putting forward leave out punishment of offenders and concern for victims. Therefore, presentationally, the added words will reassure the public. While a large amount of the Green Paper’s and the Bill’s thrust is to examine ways in which to get into that cycle of reoffending, both to save the cost of reoffending and save the trauma of what reoffending does to future victims, we need public opinion to help and support us in that task. In that, we have to reassure the public that we do not forget the element of punishment in the approach to crime. Our remand proposals remain in place and will be taken forward. The policy is to restrict the availability of custodial remand in cases where it is apparent that there is no real prospect of the defendant being sentenced to imprisonment if convicted. The IPP was a product of the consultation. Just as a lot of the feedback on the Green Paper was against the 50 per cent discount, a lot of the evidence from the judiciary was that IPPs do not work, build up problems and leave doubt and uncertainty in the system. We have listened, we are going to consult and we will bring forward proposals by the autumn to replace the present regime. The noble Lord mentioned the fact that the Prison Service and the probation service are going to be put under pressure by these cuts and by further demands being made on them. I think that that is true. The whole thrust of the strategy in the Green Paper and now in this legislation is to try to get more for less. There are some indications that we are not being overoptimistic in that. We are challenging both the Prison Service and the probation service to look at their own efficiencies in the way that they carry out their roles. We have a wide range of proposals right through the criminal justice system to bring in both the private and voluntary sectors to participate in payment-by-results pilots to see if there are alternative ways of delivering the service of both custody and post-custody treatment. This will also be part of a more general approach to treat people more holistically while they are in custody and post custody. I understand what the noble Lord said about social welfare. It is an extremely sensitive subject. Again, I have answered questions before on this: you cannot have a system that is supposed to be targeted at the most disadvantaged in our society, cut the budget to that programme and not by implication cause problems for those who are so disadvantaged. The Government are not abolishing funding for social welfare law. About £50 million will be spent in this area. Not all social welfare law cases will be outside scope, but neither are they all of equal importance. We are trying to ensure that where we retain the social welfare programme, we will keep to areas where there is a real problem in debt, housing and community care and subject them to analysis. In developing our proposals we have taken into account the importance of the issues at stake, the individual’s ability to present their own case, including their vulnerability, the availability of alternative sources of funding and the availability of alternative routes to the resolving of this issue. We must face up to tough choices and focus resources on those who need them most—the serious cases where legal advice and representation are justified. We are maintaining funding for mediation services and trying to ensure that funding is directed at the most vulnerable. We are also looking at whether we can help by offering advice in those cases. The noble Lord rightly declared that that was important in this area. This is not an easy case to make in the context of legal aid but we have to face up to economic reality, as I suspect noble Lords opposite would have to do if they were standing at this Dispatch Box. I certainly have no problem in arguing the moral case: we have made the tough decisions that one needs to make in government and in doing so we have tried to keep faith with the most vulnerable in our society.