| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Earl Russell: I thank the noble Baroness for a very fair reply. She said very much what I expected she would say. She makes the perfectly fair point that the use of this power can only be beneficial. I am very glad that I have heard that said. However, I can imagine circumstances in which a future Parliament may object very strongly even to the use of beneficial powers in this respect if there were to be a demand for even longer sentences than are being considered already. That could cause concern. Nowadays, we see a good many of these clauses. That may give rise to an issue. I do not believe that the point for making an issue is here, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 48 to 50 not moved.]
Clause 12 [Provisional awards for remand prisoners]:
[Amendments Nos. 52 to 54 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
Clause 13 [Release supervision orders]:
Lord Belstead had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 55:
The noble Lord said: I spoke to Amendment No. 55 with Amendment No. 36, which was withdrawn.
Lord Belstead moved Amendment No. 56:
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 56. In subsection (4) on page 9 the Bill provides for the Parole Board to be involved in the holding of oral hearings at which prisoners can be heard or represented in order to decide whether a recommendation shall be made to the Secretary of State that the prisoner shall have a hostel condition or a curfew order condition specified in the prisoner's release supervision order. The effect of this amendment is to make the Parole Board responsible for recommending to the Secretary of State any conditions which should be specified for release supervision orders.
I say in passing that perhaps I am not being wholly genuine in putting forward the matter on that basis. This would probably make for an almost impossible situation, but it is a convenient peg on which to hang what is in effect a probing amendment. I believe that it is nonetheless an important probing amendment from the point of view of administration of the Parole Board. I ask my noble friend the Minister the reason for the subsection. First, is there a special reason for requiring Parole Board intervention to recommend hostel or curfew order conditions? If so, does that special reason apply only to those two types of supervision condition? What about offence-focused work conditions? What about psychiatric or psychological oversight and treatment conditions? What about conditions not to enter a given geographical area? What about non-contact conditions which are very important for the protection of victims? What about so many of the essential conditions that are imposed on paedophiles?
Secondly, how will subsection (4) work in practice? I am now speaking about the Bill as drafted. I have been discourteous. My noble friend has given me important assurances as to how parole will be injected into the Bill. However, under the Bill as drafted the Parole Board will have had nothing whatever to do with a fixed-term sentenced prisoner who is about to have a release supervision order made. The Parole Board will go into an oral hearing "cold", as it were. In those circumstances will the prisoner have a dossier of reports? If so, who will have written those reports?
How is the Parole Board to be interpreted under subsection (4)? Is it to be a panel of the board and, if so, how many members will it comprise? In that context, have the Government given any thought to the cost of the provision and the time needed to set up these panels from a much smaller board? That is an important point. One comes to a particular moment in the process of review, in this case the review for early days of release. At an earlier point in the Bill reference is made to letting prisoners know at a prescribed time. It is important that the whole matter does not slip. If it will take quite a long time to set this up, things will slip.
Thirdly, the Secretary of State is to make rules for regulating the supervision of prisoners. Presumably, those rules will contain guidance as to the criteria for specifying a hostel or a curfew order condition. Have the Government given any thought to those criteria? I remind your Lordships that a prisoner who is released
I do not ask for answers to all these questions this evening. If my noble friend writes to me, I shall be only too pleased. These questions may appear to be a rather grudging response to the need for the Parole Board to become involved in specifying release supervision order conditions for hostels and curfew orders, but at the moment I believe that my list of questions shows that the position is not entirely clear, at least not to me, hence the amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Blatch: My noble friend is right. We are speaking in a vacuum in advance of any consideration of the matters that concern my noble friend and on which I have given him assurances. Given that caveat, one of the reasons why we believe that the Parole Board should be involved in commitments to bail and/or curfew orders is that both orders involve a restriction on liberty. We believe that there should be Parole Board involvement in something that restricts liberty. The Bill provides for the Secretary of State to set the conditions of supervision. In practice, this will be done by the prison governor acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, exactly as happens now in the case of short term offenders. We are discussing longer-term offenders between now and Report stage. But there are a number of standard conditions such as the need to maintain contact with the supervising probation officer, a requirement to live only where approved by that officer and a requirement to take only such employment as is similarly approved. Where necessary, additional improvements may be included which may for example require the offender to attend a treatment programme to address his offending behaviour or to live at a specific address such as a family home.
Decisions as to the inclusion of such additional conditions are made on the recommendation of the supervising probation service which will have conducted a thorough risk assessment, together with information obtained during the offender's time in custody. Relevant information will include his behaviour in prison, attitude to the offence committed and his home circumstances. This is the type of information which is considered now by the Parole Board in the case of long-term offenders who are being considered for discretionary release. When the Parole Board will not be involved in the decision to release an offender, I see no value in its routine involvement in the setting of conditions. I do not know whether my noble friend has even contemplated the volume of work that would be involved if the Parole Board moved into the area of the 90 per cent. of prisoners who received sentences below four years. This can be done efficiently and properly by the prison governor on the recommendation of the probation service, taking into account the principal aims of supervision: protection of the public, prevention of re-offending and the
There is, however, still to be a Parole Board involvement in the setting of the two conditions mentioned by my noble friend: the requirement to live in an approved hostel and the imposition of a curfew order. The reason for this is straightforward. Both conditions involve a significant loss of liberty on the part of the offender and it is only right and proper that an independent body makes the recommendation to the Secretary of State that they should apply. The board will make their decision on the basis of recommendations from the supervising probation service which will have considered the need for such conditions as part of the on-going risk assessment process inherent in sentence planning. The primary consideration will, as always, be the need to protect the public.
The Bill allows for appropriate conditions of supervision to be set in the interests of the public and the offender; the involvement of the Parole Board would not add to this protection and would involve an impossible burden of work. Only in the specific areas of curfew orders and probation hostels is it right for the Secretary of State to have the recommendation of the board.
For these reasons, I hope that my noble friend will not press the amendment. But I end yet again with the promise that everything I have said is in advance of any consideration that we will have between now and Report stage on the whole issue of assessment of risk before the release of long-term prisoners.
Page 8, line 45, leave out from ("released") to end of line 46 insert ("under section 10").
Page 9, line 27, leave out from ("any") to end of line 29 and insert ("conditions.").
8.45 p.m.
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page