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6.47 pm
Sir Peter Lloyd (Fareham): I agree with the point that was made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) about drugs and drug testing.
First, let me declare an interest as the parliamentary adviser to the Police Federation.
This is an important Bill. Its importance is perhaps obscured somewhat by the thin attendance in the Chamber, but the Bill covers much ground. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) said, it will need detailed examination in Committee, which I hope it will get.
What I want to do now is make some brief points on just one theme which goes right through the Bill: the need for effective programmes to deal with offenders during their sentences in prison and in the community. The provision on drugs, for example, which the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey raised with the Home Secretary in an intervention, is absolutely right. It would introduce a new drug abstinence order. I am not completely clear what such an order does over and above the powers that are currently available, but what is plain is that it is no good expanding the practice of testing for drugs--which I welcome--or making orders about abstinence, especially where addiction is the causal factor in the offence, unless there are good programmes of treatment and support for the drug-taking offender. Far too few such programmes are available and there are waiting lists for them. If the Government will the testing, they must be willing to deal effectively and swiftly with the individuals who fail the tests.
Unfortunately, drug treatment is not cheap, although in the long run, it is even more expensive to identify addicted criminals and then keep them untreated in prisons, or under some "order to abstain" in the community--which, without the prompt treatment that they need, will be generally ineffectual.
The same type of issue is raised by the restructuring of the probation service. It makes sense, when practical, to organise the different agencies in the criminal justice system so that the administrative units of police, probation and Crown Prosecution Service cover conterminous areas. That obviously facilitates co-operation. However, the probation and prison services have the most need for a structure providing for regular contact and joint action. I realise that such a structure is not easily achieved, partly because the Prison Service has a regional administration, and not least because prisoners are frequently held far from the areas to which they will go when they are released. It is consequently very difficult to organise direct contact with the local probation service while prisoners are held in prison.
I think that the Government's intention was to tackle that problem with their initial idea of merging the Prison Service with the probation service. I believe that, at this stage, that would have been a step too far. However, it is all the more reason to ask the Minister, in his reply, to explain how the reorganisation of probation will be used to fill the yawning gaps between prison and probation.
Currently, prisoners who start drug treatment in prison seldom find it possible to continue it outside. The same is true of other education or offending behaviour programmes. Surely it is just at that point--when they are re-entering society--that many prisoners most need the discipline, support and opportunity of such programmes if they are to remain outside prison and lead a law-abiding life. Such programmes are badly needed.
As the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey said, the number of prisoners who are released but back in prison within two years is very high--for adults, the figure is more than 50 per cent; for young offenders, the figure is near to 80 per cent--showing that prisons are not working. However, the Bill provides a great opportunity, if money is put behind it, to make a large difference in the rate of reoffending. I hope that Ministers will seize the opportunity.
I am not saying that joint working does not happen; it happens very often, sometimes in very difficult conditions. Great effort is made by probation officers and by prison staff to ensure that it happens. Joint working has long been the objective of successive Governments. It was known as "through care" under the mild and gentle regime of the previous Home Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). Perhaps the current Home Secretary prefers to be a little more robust and call it "through punishment", or perhaps "joined-up punishment", but what we are taking about is seamless rehabilitation--which is a much clumsier title. Although I do not think that that title will catch on, I hope that the idea does, so that the positive work in prison may continue outside, where experience suggests that it can often be more effective.
I am glad that the Home Secretary finally decided not to rename the probation service in his efforts to bring it more firmly into the front line of the criminal justice system. Far from helping to achieve desirable change, that would have undermined morale and self-esteem within the service and made its ability and readiness to accept change less positive and less successful. Perhaps the Home Secretary could share that psychological insight with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who has not yet grasped that changing the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary is seen by its members as a vote of no confidence which will reduce morale and make constructive change on the essentials of policing in Northern Ireland harder to achieve.
I am glad to see that the Bill extends the use of tagging. I am sure that it is right to proceed by careful stages in the extension of tagging, to ensure that we do not move ahead of the reliability of the evolving technology, and to learn how it can best be used and with what result. However, although it looks as if tagging will have a very important role in dealing with offenders, it must not be used as a punishment on its own. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett), in his speech, made the point extremely well as he warned that tagging's contribution will be to provide, when it is needed, a
framework of discipline to community penalties, reinforcing sentences designed to keep the offender away from trouble and engaged in the programmes of work or education that have been designed specifically to counter the offender's criminal behaviour.
I believe that tagging will not work very effectively if it is not part of such programmes. It is not a cheap disciplinary alternative to such programmes, but a means by which they can be more effectively and safely delivered.
Eventually, tagging opens the way to the possibility of more flexible sentences, of which part may be spent in prison and part in the community, depending on the progress that the prisoner makes. That raises large questions on sentencing, however. Administrative action should not determine the proportion of a sentence spent in prison; the courts must do that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald is quite right in her concern. The courts should impose appropriate penalties that deliberately include the flexibility that is needed, and the management of sentences should be generally overseen by a judicial process. As that is not part of the Bill, I shall not deal with it more deeply now. However, the Bill is leading in that direction, and it would be helpful if--during the Bill's progress, if not in the Minister's reply--the Government could say in outline what they have in mind for the further evolution of their policy in that sphere.
Tagging should eventually have an impact on the way in which prison sentences are served in prison. There is a shortage of suitable courses and programmes in prison--courses that prepare prisoners for release and jobs outside. Prisoners have a variety of different needs, and they cannot all be effectively catered for inside. I doubt whether it will ever be possible to provide suitable courses for all prisoners, however liberal and generous the Treasury might become. Tagging should be used to enable suitable prisoners, at suitable times, to join appropriate educational and training schemes outside.
Mr. Gareth Thomas (Clwyd, West):
I do not propose to detain the House for long, but simply wish to make a few general points.
I welcome the Bill. It is not surprising that it has received cross-party support, and that there will be no Division on Second Reading. It introduces various reforms which--I am sure many hon. Members will agree--are necessary to allow the Government to continue waging an effective war against crime, and particularly to deal with the very well established link between drug abuse and crime.
The Bill is a compendium of measures with no apparent overriding theme other than pragmatism. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary clearly takes penological
research to heart and has learned from it, but it is important that we listen to the communities that we represent as well as to the experts.
The Government's record on crime is good: recorded crime has fallen by 7 per cent. since the election, convictions have gone up and extra cash has been awarded to police forces to recruit extra officers. I welcome the emphasis on crime prevention, particularly the proposed new drug-testing powers. I endorse the comments of the right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd) that such powers are essential to break the link between drug abuse and crime, but that we must have well-resourced and accessible programmes for the rehabilitation of offenders to get them off the drug habit. I shall be particularly interested in any assurances that my hon. Friend the Minister can give us on that pertinent issue.
The provision to allow criminal courts to make drug abstinence orders as a condition of community sentences is eminently sensible, as are the provisions on electronic monitoring or tagging, which should not be a punishment in its own right. I know that the Home Office does not always listen too attentively to lawyers at the moment, but I stress that I am speaking not in a trade union capacity, but simply as a barrister with some experience in defence and prosecution in criminal law. The Government must acknowledge the pace of technological progress and expand the electronic monitoring programme. Those who are released on licence must be monitored in appropriate circumstances.
My view is not specific to Wales, but, in view of the recent conclusion of the Waterhouse inquiry in north Wales, I was particularly heartened by the robust measures designed to increase the powers available to protect children. My constituents will be pleased that the Government have responded to the widespread concern--I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) also made this point--about the infiltration of the system by those who want to prey on children. The Waterhouse inquiry is testament to that. We must have an integrated system for protecting children. I congratulate the Government on creating a new criminal offence of accepting or applying for work with children for those who have been disqualified by reasons of previous sexual offences.
I welcome the restructuring of the probation service. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey invited me, as the only Welsh Member present, to comment on the fact that the Bill will create only one National Probation Service for England and Wales, rather than two separate services. I have no strong views on the matter. Given that Home Office functions have not been devolved to the National Assembly for Wales, there is coherence in the Government's approach.
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