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1.38 pm
Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth): I welcome the Bill. The hon. Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) has taken a constructive approach to the way in which we deal with imprisonment. It is a pity that there is such a short time to discuss the Bill. I understand that the Government are desperate to reach the Constitutional Change Bill of the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker), which deals with referendums.
The Prisoners' Earnings Bill merits a longer debate as it raises a variety of important issues. However, I do not intend to delay the House. I am afraid that, again, I shall rouse the Minister's zeal to defend the indefensible by pointing out the background against which we are debating the Bill. The Home Secretary is complacent not only about violent crime but about the chaotic state of the Prison Service. That fact has been confirmed by Her Majesty's inspectorate of prisons, as well as by his predecessor.
During this Parliament, the prison population has soared from about 46,500 to about 54,000. That reflects the Government's dramatic failure to address the causes of crime. To make matters even worse, the Prison Service is having to cope with a budget cut of 14.5 per cent. in real terms over the next three years. Not only is that a difficulty facing the Prison Service but it is worrying for the public generally, because if the Prison Service is not effective, a series of offenders who have not been reformed and are likely to reoffend will come back into the community.
Prison certainly has a number of purposes. Punishment and deterrent are crucial, but rehabilitation and making recompense to victims, whether financial or in some other form, are also ways in which the offender should pay his debt to society. It is in the interests of the public for restitution to be paid. It is certainly in the interests of the public and potential future victims to give prisoners a sense of discipline, self-worth and experience of work that is likely to result in their being less likely to reoffend when they are released at the end of their sentence. There are many other issues, such as drugs in prison and the ineffectiveness of much of the psychiatric work that should be going on there, but they go well beyond the Bill's scope.
Reoffending is certainly an issue on which the House should be united. It is not best achieved by sending offenders to so-called "universities of crime". It would be far more prudent to ensure that, once convicted, all activities in which prisoners engage are geared towards effective rehabilitation. That is why we welcome the Bill and have long argued for the principle of productive remunerated work in prisons.
Before the Bill was introduced, my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) said on the issue to which it refers:
Community service schemes have rightly been applauded where they force offenders to make some recompense to their victims, but there is no reason why prisoners should not work to compensate their victims as well. We are looking at ways in which industry can be brought into partnership so that the lot of prisoners' victims can be improved, while ensuring that prisoners are less likely to offend after release.
A balance must of course be struck, because it would be wrong if offenders who ended up in prison were treated better than those in society who are also without proper employment and have not offended in the serious way that has led to imprisonment. I am sure that the hon. Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) would agree that the Government must maintain a careful balance so that prisoners are not favoured at the expense of other sections of society. Once that is accepted, the principle will be welcome.
We recognise the value of productive work in rehabilitating prisoners, and it is a shocking indictment of policy that, at the end of the 20th century, we do not have effective rehabilitative programmes in all our prisons. One ex-prisoner commented in The Guardian:
A disproportionately large proportion of prisoners have few or no qualifications. A facility to award genuine qualifications based on work could greatly help them to find gainful work following release. Conversely, many other prisoners are highly qualified, and we should try to make them work in prison-based employment that utilises their skills. Just as in the outside world, neither prisoners nor the community at large benefit from wasted ability.
Offenders should never be allowed to earn more money than law-abiding citizens in the community or be advantaged in comparison. I understand and have some sympathy for the proposal that a proportion of the moneys earned should be directed towards victim support schemes and crime prevention measures. We support those very strongly. Community service schemes have rightly made recompense to the victims of crime. It is high time that prisoners should be able to do the same.
However, some concerns have been raised by the Victim Support national office and I hope that the Minister will address two points in his response. First, at the moment, compensation orders are not usually made against offenders who are sent to prison because it is assumed that they cannot pay. A far greater number of prisoners should be able to pay compensation to their victims than is provided for in the Bill. In other words, is it not right that the first call on compensation if a prisoner is able to earn money should be the victim of the crimes for which he has been convicted? I would be interested to know whether the Minister feels that that principle is covered adequately and, if not, whether he will introduce measures to ensure that that principle underlies the way in which we approach a prisoner's responsibility towards the victim or victims of his crime. I am sure that the hon. Member for Finchley, the Bill's promoter, does not disagree with that principle.
The second aspect on which the Victim Support national office has expressed concern, which may go rather more to the content of the Bill, is the compulsory charitable donation. Although the Bill states that donations will be used for voluntary organisations concerned with victim support and crime prevention, there seems to be a suggestion that the main beneficiary will be victim support. If prisoners were allowed to choose the charity to which they gave money, there would be an opportunity for proper thought and discussion about the effects of crime on victims and for reparation.
As the Bill stands, the donation looks a bit like a tax on prisoners. Victim Support is worried about the implication for its Home Office funding. It has always believed that the organisation should be funded by the main criminal justice budget and that the funding should not be dependent on a levy on prisoners. That point ties well with the principle, which I put forward a moment ago, that the first call on the money should be direct compensation for the victims of the crimes that the prisoners have committed. I hope that the Minister will accept that point and the principle behind it.
The notion that some money should be diverted to the cost of keeping inmates in prison is welcome as long as, again, it is not seen as purely a cost-cutting exercise. Reductions in the Prison Service budget have already placed great strain on vital services such as education provision and basic security. As with productive work and training, education is important if we are to produce people who not only have been punished by being in prison and by the discipline of prison but come out more likely to avoid reoffending and to be reasonable members of the wider community. I hope that the Minister can respond positively on that point.
The creation of an investment fund for use by prisoners on release should greatly assist in the first few weeks following release. There are far too many cases of prisoners coming out of prison, being totally adrift and almost drifting into reoffending because their circumstances are not very positive. Obviously, they are still to blame for any offences which they commit. However, it is a foolish society that does not anticipate that danger and does not try to build in protections. For that reason, the proposal to give a prisoner something with which to plan a future on release is positive and sensible, and does not conflict with the concept of punishment for which prison is intended.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope):
I do not intend to allow my remarks to range as far and wide as those of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael). Before I speak on Third Reading in general, I must say to him that, although it is of course possible not only that the numbers of inmates in our prisons have been increasing but that they will continue to increase when my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary's tough new sentencing laws are in place, our discussions on the Bill have to do with how productive prisoners' lives may be when they are in prison.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) on having brought the Bill through to the point where we are on the verge of giving it a Third Reading. The fact that the Bill has made such relatively trouble-free progress through its Commons stages, and arrives back in the Chamber without amendment, is the result, I think, of two main factors.
First, the proposals themselves are eminently sensible. They open the way for some exciting developments in the way in which work is provided for prisoners in the future, and, as my hon. Friend said, they do so in a way that means that there are no losers as a result of the Bill, only winners.
Apart from the proposals themselves, the second key factor has been the way in which my hon. Friend has guided the Bill through its various stages, building and maintaining a consensus that has embraced hon. Members on both sides of the House. I know that he has also been assiduous in ensuring that outside organisations concerned with crime and the treatment of offenders were consulted, and were content with the direction set by the Bill.
As the House will know, the Prison Service, along with other parts of the public sector, is currently having to examine its operations very critically to meet demanding cost reduction targets; but Ministers and the prisons board have made it clear that we expect cost reductions to come mainly from increased efficiency, not from cuts in regime activities, especially those that can be shown to be beneficial from the point of view of reducing the risk of reoffending after release.
Constructive work clearly falls into that category, and because it actually brings income into the system to offset operating costs, it is in a unique position to maintain or increase the amount of activity provided, while at the same time reducing the net cost of the activity. The key is to get more prisoners to work, and to get prisoners working harder when they are at work. Although work is compulsory for convicted prisoners, those objectives cannot be achieved simply by coercion. As the existing wages schemes show, prisoners will work harder if there is a reasonable incentive.
The arrangements cannot simply be left at that. Prisoners do not have the same living expenses as other people, and it would be wrong for them to accumulate spending money without contributing to the cost of their upkeep, to the upkeep of their dependants or to victim support schemes. The Bill therefore establishes a sensible framework, with appropriate safeguards, for such deductions, as well as for using part of prisoners' earnings for compulsory savings to be repaid on release.
In many ways, the Bill had its origin in the Woolf report on the Strangeways disturbances, but it is also totally in line with the Learmont report, with its call for much more active industrial prisons.
There are two outstanding points. First, I confirm for the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth that a compensation order to an individual victim of course takes precedence over any other deduction, and that will continue to happen.
"Partnerships between prisons and industry could provide invaluable training with genuine qualifications, so that prisoners will have something to offer back to society on their release rather than improved criminal skills."
"The boredom in prison is mindless. Facilities like education, sport or the library are very limited in terms of time and quality and more often take the role of baby-sitting rather than adult stimulation".
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