While I have made my feelings clear on many occasions on just how egregious the treatment of all IPP prisoners has been, the situation for individuals sentenced as children has been arguably even more cruel and wrong. As I understand it, there are 85 people currently serving an IPP sentence that was handed down when they were children and some were of a very young age.
The teen years are such a formative time, and of the 85 remaining—who are now all adults—they have arguably had the worst start in life; 36 of them have never been released. What chance have they got of adjusting back into whatever might pass as a normal life? The only upside of this is that, because there are not that many of them, more time and attention can therefore be focused on fitting them for release.
According to the Prison Reform Trust, there is a window in which people typically develop the support and inner resources to desist from crime. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has said, this unfortunate cohort is rapidly passing that window, which means that giving them the maximum possible support as quickly as possible is vital.
Amendment 155 would halve the qualifying period in which other statutory provisions for children become spent. Amendment 162 would give heavier support to DPPs who are unsuccessful in staying on parole or getting released at all. My worry about changing sentence planning reviews from annually to quarterly, however, is that if nothing has happened it might devalue the relevance of the review and dishearten the prisoner.
Amendment 163 would halve the time between referrals for consideration by the Parole Board to one year, which I heartily commend. The issue for me is the cost in financial and human resources, to which the Minister might want to refer. The only upside of this concentrated help is the fact that there are not many DPPs in terms of the overall cost that is being expended on IPP prisoners.
If these young people are to have a real chance, they need the help now, while their mind and their development can still be receptive to another way of living their life.
]]>Amendment 165 comes from a concern at the lack of fulfilment of aftercare obligations for prisoners who have been transferred to a secure hospital and subsequently returned to prison. It amends Section 117 in Part 8 of the Mental Health Act. We are talking about approximately 400 people who will, arguably, need additional help to cope with their return to prison life and subsequent reintegration into the community. It will help clarify and highlight the existing Section 117 entitlement to aftercare for prisoners who have been transferred from secure hospital to prison and remain either in prison or out on licence in the community. These individuals can be defined as those who are entitled to Section 117 aftercare. Sometimes this does not happen and individuals either in prison or out in the community do not receive the aftercare they need or are entitled to. Clearly, this entitlement is and should be reflected in their release plan and will increase their chances of a successful transition into the community, reducing the risk of recall.
Amendment 166 addresses and seeks to mitigate some of the damage done in prison to IPP prisoners who are vulnerable to mental ill-health. It would apply to the additional aftercare duty in respect of IPPs who have never been released and are three or more years over their tariff. Approximately a third of IPP prisoners already had mental health issues at the time of their offence. On top of this, research by the British Psychological Society and Probation Institute says that the IPP sentence itself is characterised by a state of perpetual uncertainty and anxiety, fear, hopelessness, despair and a reduced sense of the future, leading to behaviour such as self-imposed isolation, self-harm and disengagement from their sentence progression.
The sentence also creates feelings of deep unfairness, injustice and mistrust of authority, which can also negatively impact their mental health. Prisoners who have been unjustly incarcerated have pretty much the same reactions—as well they might. Poor mental health has now become a prevalent characteristic of IPP prisoners. The British Psychological Society has said that IPP sentences cause acute harm to mental health. This damage is why many of us in this House believe there should be a resentencing exercise before more damage is done.
In any event, there is a very big job to do when these individuals are finally released. We know that the fear and anxiety caused by the possibility of recall not only causes further psychological damage but dissuades many IPPs on licence from seeking help. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, has already raised the case of Matthew Price. He was just a few months from eligibility for discharge from licence. His case is one which many noble Lords might be familiar with, because he entitled his email, which many of us received, “perpetual psychological torture”. It is so sad that he suffered in that way for so long. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, wrote back to Matthew, encouraging him to hold on for just a short while longer, as did I. Matthew wrote that,
“this never-ending sentence … has crushed and broken me … I’ve now been released from prison for almost 10 years, yet I’m no nearer knowing when or if this nightmare will ever end”.
As we have already heard, he committed suicide a short while after he wrote this. My fervent hope is that if he had had proper continuing support and had not been afraid to seek help because he had had psychological support from the beginning, and if the current measures in this Bill to cut the licence period from 10 years to three had been in force, then Matthew, and many others, would still be with us today. We have damaged these people. Is it not therefore incumbent on us to do all we can to help put them back together again?
]]>Clause 48 currently removes the element of annual review in favour of one-off review every three years. However, if the Parole Board decides not to terminate the licence of this point, Amendments 149 and 150 restore the right—removed by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act—to an annual review by the Parole Board. The Prison Reform Trust comments that having a sunset clause of a further two years might just constitute a high bar for some prisoners, and that the Parole Board should be able to terminate the licence after one year, otherwise licences could drag on for years, as before.
The circumstances described in Amendment 152 are probably quite rare, but it is worth ensuring that a person would not have to suffer if they had been recalled but the Secretary of State had revoked the recall, presumably because there had been an error of some kind and they should not have been recalled. The prisoner should not be penalised because of an error not of their making.
Amendment 153 continues in a similar vein, but this time gives the Parole Board the ability to maintain the sunset clause. However, in this case, it is slightly more complicated. Firstly, the Secretary of State can recall if they conclude on reasonable grounds that the prisoner has deliberately revoked the terms of their licence and the safety of the public would be at risk. The Parole Board can overturn the Secretary of State’s decision to recall a prisoner if on subsequent review, and if it is privy to more information than the Secretary of State, it subsequently concludes that the prisoner is not putting the public at risk.
Amendment 157 ensures that the Government use their wide-ranging powers to change the qualifying period using only secondary legislation and that they can revise it only downwards. If they want to revise it upwards, it will have to be done with primary legislation. This is within the spirit of the Bill today. This amendment ensures that a future Government would not be tempted to use this power to make the situation worse for IPP prisoners, not better.
All in all, this suite of amendments is sensible and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, pragmatic. It is offered in a spirit of helpfulness. I sincerely hope that the Minister will see this and maybe feel that it is appropriate to introduce government amendments to this effect.
]]>Although many people will have heard about the Windrush scandal, they—like me—may not know how it arose. The tale is worth retelling, because it sets the context of how the Windrush scandal was allowed to arise, and how it went from bad to worse. Under the Immigration Act 1971, foreign nationals ordinarily resident in the UK were deemed to have settled status and given indefinite leave to remain. However, many people were not issued with any documentation confirming their status, and the Home Office did not keep a full register confirming who was entitled to this status. So the fault for what subsequently happened lies, at least in part, at the door of the Home Office.
Then we had the “hostile environment”, initiated by Theresa May in 2012 with the intention of deterring illegal immigrants—but the Home Office started checking more widely. By late 2017, media coverage started to pay attention to individual cases of long-term residents facing hardship due to their difficulties in proving their lawful immigration status. Jobs, homes, healthcare and welfare benefits were lost, as we have all heard. People were detained, removed from the UK and denied re-entry to their homes following trips abroad.
I can only imagine what it must have felt like to be faced with billboards saying, “Go Home or Face Arrest” and the psychological distress felt by people whose residence was suddenly called into question after so many years. Research by the University of London found that psychological distress suffered by the Windrush population rose markedly after the Immigration Act 2014 and the subsequent Windrush scandal came to light. This had a worse psychological effect than the coronavirus on the general population.
Some interim measures to redress the damage were introduced and Theresa May apologised in words to the effect of, “But I didn’t mean you”. But it was too late—the hostile environment had spread and infected large parts of the white British psyche.
We have heard that, in 2018, Wendy Williams began her review of “lessons learned” and made 30 recommendations, which were accepted in full by the then Home Secretary Priti Patel. The compensation scheme was introduced in 2019, administered by the Home Office. It is shameful to note that by 2023, fewer than 2,000 claims had been settled—only 13% of the outstanding claims.
UNISON has commented that the Home Office administrators of the compensation scheme have
“placed victims under scrutiny … treated their claims with skepticism and placed their … lives in limbo. For too many of those affected, the compensation scheme feels like more of the same rather than … justice”.
The Home Office, aided and abetted by the “hostile environment”, was clearly the source of the problem. I cannot see it being capable of delivering the solution any time soon, given its record so far. It seems clear to me that administration of the compensation scheme, as has been called for by so many others, should be placed in independent hands. Age UK and many others, including the Lib Dem group here, are calling for this.
Even when compensation has been offered, some offers were insultingly low and arguably the most important element of all—loss of private pension—was not considered, consigned to the “too difficult” box. Many of these individuals are now pensioners, with no opportunity to make up the lost pensions they would have received.
After Priti Patel accepted the Wendy Williams recommendations in full, the next Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, reneged on three—to have a migrant commissioner to engage with migrants directly, to have a review of the remit and role of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, and to have reconciliation events with Windrush families. Wendy Williams said that the Home Office must
“open itself up to greater external scrutiny”
and advised it that it was
“vital to improve the accountability, effectiveness and legitimacy of the system”.
UNISON is currently working with other parties to provide a legal challenge to this decision and has been given permission to go to the High Court this spring. In September 2021, Wendy Williams reviewed progress and said that the Home Office was
“potentially poised to make the … changes it needs to”.
Given that in 2023 it was only 13% through the case load, I wonder whether she is anywhere close to being satisfied.
I will ask four questions of the Minister. First, will the Government ask Ms Williams to include a further independent review of progress as part of her current wider remit to look at the Home Office’s functioning more generally?
Secondly, a Home Office source said that they were worried that reneging on three of the recommendations previously committed to signalled that it was
“rolling back from the commitments that we publicly made about not repeating those mistakes”.
What evidence does the Minister have that this is not the case, and that the hostile environment is a thing of the past?
Thirdly, will the Government hand the management of the compensation scheme to an independent body? It would help to restore trust and confidence. If the Minister was considering responding by saying that this would prolong completing the job even further, perhaps he could consider that it could hardly be slower.
Fourthly, on pensions, will the Government consider creating a team of actuaries to work solely on pensions claims? That way, it would not hold everything else up.
Before I sit down, I will refer to another, bigger picture that we might want to consider here. I wonder how many, if any, illegal immigrants actually gave up and went home, or were deterred from coming to the UK at all by the “hostile environment”. It certainly has not stopped people risking their lives in small boats in the channel—as we saw only yesterday from the tragedy in the news.
We can conclude that the Government’s immigration strategy is a failure, except in one sense. It has succeeded in helping to stir up racism and racial intolerance in this country and has fostered hatred against all immigrants and even people of second, third and further generations back. After all, the Home Office only responds to the tone set by the Government of the day; unfortunately, the Government of the day have been the Conservative Party, which has been setting the hostile environment tone for far too long.
]]>I looked up definitions of poverty to try to make sure that I knew what I would be talking about. We all have an idea of what we think poverty is, and the government measures of poverty fall into several categories, but they seem to be a relative low income and an absolute low income, and they are all linked to the median income of people in our society. It rankles me that anyone can be defined by their poverty. I thought the concept from the noble Lord, Lord Desai, was very interesting, although I know that it is much more complicated than any of us wants to go into today, but it was a useful thing to say that, above this income, you cannot be defined by your poverty.
A wider definition, which I like, is from the European Commission:
“People are said to be living in poverty if their income and resources are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living considered acceptable in the society in which they live”.
I suspect that the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, would heartily agree with that, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, would also be involved—I cannot refer to her without saying Martha; it is weird. She spoke very coherently and passionately about the importance of communication: if you do not have access to broadband or a mobile phone, that is very significant. How can you then participate in a world that is ruled by these communications? Most people in Britain would consider these to be essentials above the poverty line, and I totally agree.
As well as relatively low and absolutely low income, there is another category that has been discussed today, and that is destitution. It is defined by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as when people have been unable to afford two or more of the following essentials, in the past month: shelter, food, heating, lighting, clothing and footwear, basic toiletries or a net income after housing of less than £95 a week.
We have heard plenty of horror stories about the number of working poor and children in poverty. The only good-news story is that the least likely demographic to be in poverty is now pensioners, who were once the most likely. That just goes to show what government policy can achieve, given the will.
Sadly, the divide between the haves and the have-nots is getting wider, not narrower. We are in a vicious downward spiral. To transform it to a virtuous upward spiral, we need investment in the most important assets for any Government to have—their human resources. We have heard plenty of excellent suggestions in this debate, as well as stark reminders of the consequences of not implementing them.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests five key ways that the UK could tackle poverty. These are: to boost incomes and reduce costs by ending the poverty premium; to reboot universal credit to ensure that work pays and provide a stronger safety net for those people who are just about managing but are tipped over into poverty by events as simple as a broken boiler; to improve educational attainment and double investment in basic skills to ensure that 5 million more adults are literate and have basic maths skills; to overhaul the childcare system, giving children a better start in life and making work pay for their parents; to back employers and, following the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, focus on investment in the long term and not the short term.
There is also the issue of decent and affordable housing, and I would focus on health as well. My noble friend did so with great explanation, as did the noble Lord, Lord Desai. If you are sitting on a 7.5 million-long patient waiting list for treatment, how can you focus on anything else? The downward spiral in our nation will not stop until we do these kinds of things.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has calculated that the total cost of poverty is approximately £78 billion a year—about £1 in every £5 that we spend on social services. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, has a different figure, but it depends on what you add in. It is certainly one of the most important, damaging areas that we need to consider. There is an equation of investment to reward which multiplies the benefits to society exponentially, the longer that it is applied. It is so short-sighted not to invest in our people.
The downward spiral we are in today does not even take account of the social costs, which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says are causing “widespread damage to society” and are a source of
“collective shame, social tension and anxiety”.
I do not know about noble Lords, but I do not want to live in a world like this. Unless we value our people and give them the resources and opportunities they need to be productive and to realise their potential, we are all impoverished, as the noble Lord, Lord Bird, said.
I feel that shame, in response to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bird—at how little I and so many of us in this House prioritise this issue. If we can put more emphasis on it, we can do it. We have done it with pensioners; they are not poor any more. But there are many different groups that we, and particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, have talked about. We need to work together, and I hope that this will kick-start something. We can do so much better in looking after our people, so that we live in a happier society that we can all appreciate and enjoy.
]]>However, there was much misunderstanding in the remarks of noble Lords today. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, summarised a lot of it very well. Mis-understanding has arisen because of the general wording of the Bill. The number of contributions on that are too many to mention, certainly at this time of the day.
This is a wicked problem; it is a complex and difficult issue, with many opinions and different understandings. It will need a lot of good will on a lot of people’s parts for this wicked problem to be resolved. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, said that we need space to move forward.
I will not commend all the wonderful speeches that we have heard today; noble Lords know who they are—here I am looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt. I will not go into any details now because it is too late in the day.
I accept that this Bill is not well drafted. It was intentionally general, but it now needs a Committee stage to put it right. The Minister has promised to publish the Government’s Bill, but we really need to know when. We need to get the different views together to solve this wicked problem.
Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
]]>The Bill is deliberately couched in general language so we can build on the discussion today and bring forward amendments to make it stronger and more acceptable to more colleagues and external groups.
First, we need to define what we mean by conversion therapy because, in reality, it is not therapy at all. As defined in my Bill, conversion therapy is any practice with the predetermined purpose of changing or suppressing a person’s expression of their sexual orientation or gender identity. These practices are based on the belief that there is a right way to behave and live your life.
According to the Government’s own research, 7% of LGBT+ people in the UK have undergone or been offered conversion therapy. For trans people, this escalates to one in seven. The experts agree—this is confirmed by a thorough government research review—that conversion therapy does not work, because a person cannot be cured of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is not a lifestyle choice but something innate; it is who, and what, we are.
What the practices do achieve, however, is deeply harmful to the recipient. It was summarised eloquently by the UN Independent Forensic Expert Group, which concluded that:
“All practices attempting conversion are inherently humiliating, demeaning and discriminatory”,
and that they
“generate profound feelings of shame, guilt, self-disgust, and worthlessness”.
The consequences can be grave. One 2020 study found that people who had undergone conversion therapy were twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts, and 75% more likely to plan a suicide attempt than the general population. We cannot leave the LGBT+ community unprotected against these harms for any longer.
In 2018, Theresa May recognised this, receiving cross-party support when she promised a ban. More than five years on, however, we are still no closer to making that a reality. I am particularly looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say because it is in her Government’s gift to help the Bill to progress. After five years of dither and delay, it is well overdue.
Many people have written to me with their concerns, and I expect we will hear some of them repeated in the Chamber today. I want to address these as best I can. I thank everyone who wrote to me, as well as the professional bodies whose expertise I have leaned on. At the heart of this issue, I think most of us agree on an awful lot. I believe there is a great deal of consensus that it is wrong to try to force anyone to be something they are not.
As I see it, there are four themes of objections to the Bill: from those who fear their right to free speech will be lost; from religious practitioners who fear they will be criminalised for preaching and teaching that LGBT practices are wrong; from professionals who work with people who may be questioning their sexuality or gender identity, like psychiatrists and teachers; and from parents who fear they will not be able to talk to their children openly about these issues. When you boil it all down, these all raise the same question: where do we draw the line on what is criminalised? When does a conversation become a conversion practice?
There are many people—particularly young people—who may be wondering about themselves. It is not always straightforward to understand your sexuality or gender identity, and grappling with these topics can be confusing and even distressing. What these people need is not a cure, but space—and support—to work things out. This may take the form of speaking with a trusted adult, like a mentor or counsellor, to explore their own feelings in a non-judgmental way.
However, the difference between that and conversion therapy is that the latter has a predetermined goal to change that person. I want to make it clear: my Bill will not criminalise these sorts of open conversations in any way, nor will it tell people what to think or what to say. Freedom of speech and religious freedom are important cornerstones of any liberal society. As a Liberal Democrat, I have always championed these values, and the last thing I would want to do is to unduly curb anybody else’s rights. Noble Lords are free to say what they believe: the rules on free speech are the same here as anywhere else in British law. Noble Lords are entitled to express an opinion, just not to coerce somebody else into agreeing with them and changing their behaviour as a result.
My little Bill team and I had an excellent meeting with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London last week, who used the phrase “good prayer”, putting the pastoral needs of the person first, accepting them for what they are, and not trying to push one’s own beliefs of who the person ought to be. Yesterday, the Church of England issued a new briefing and reflection on conversion therapy. It is excellent and I urge anyone with concerns in this area to have a look. The Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Quakers, the Hindu Council and the Buddhist dhamma centre have already supported a ban.
We see it in the medical field, too. Through a memorandum of understanding, all major psychological therapy professional bodies in England, alongside the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of GPs and NHS England, have agreed a set definition of conversion therapy—the same one we have adopted in the Bill. That is why, before any attempt to prosecute, the Bill would require police to demonstrate both action and motivation to be present.
I appreciate that these are complex topics, which I look forward to exploring in detail in Committee. I am very open to any amendments which do not undermine the effectiveness of the ban. It must be comprehensive, clear and inclusive of all LGBT+ people. I hope we can find it within ourselves to come together this morning to find a way forward, to deliver the change that the LGBT+ community so needs.
]]>My aim for today is to tease out the arguments but, because of the high number of colleagues wishing to speak, I would be very grateful if noble Lords could resist the temptation to repeat points already made by other colleagues.
]]>I heard the Minister’s arguments about transparency in his opening remarks, but the charity Victim Support found that as many as six in 10 victims do not currently receive their rights under the victims’ code. Improving enforcement rates will need adequate funding. What additional resources will be allocated to ensure that the code is enforced?
There is a narrative running through the Bill to empower and protect victims and give them more of a say—but not all victims. The Government are leaving out two or arguably three classes of victim. According to the Centre for Women’s Justice, more than half the women in prison or under community sentences are themselves victims who have been coerced in some way into crime, as so ably described by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. I expect the Committee stage to involve amendments to ensure a new statutory defence for victims: that the victim was made to or pressured to commit certain offences.
The second group of victims are victims of human trafficking and other migrants who fear to report abuse to the police because, according to research by the Victims’ Commissioner, every single police force in England and Wales had passed on data to Immigration Enforcement. If the Government truly mean it when they say that no victim of domestic violence should be fearful of coming forward, they must erect a firewall, as several Peers have said today—otherwise, the most vulnerable victims will continue to suffer.
There is much more to say about victims, but time does not permit because I want to move on to Part 4 of the Bill, which I do not agree with. The victim protection theme continues, in that public safety is made paramount. Indeed, the thrust of the Bill concerns not prisoners but protecting the public against them and, apparently out of sheer vindictiveness, punishing some of them to the extent of contravening the convention on human rights, which should be for everyone. For example, why rob the whole life tariff prisoner of the right to marry or form a civil partnership? It boils down to the medieval concept of “civic death”, like the fact that we continue to flout the convention by not allowing prisoners to vote. If you have committed a severe crime, been found out and punished with imprisonment, you become a non-person—your stake in society is lost. Taking away the right to marry from whole life tariff prisoners is vindictive, especially, as I learned only today, because it appears to be based on just one case. If the Minister believes it is not vindictive, let him explain why in his concluding remarks or write to me.
The new right for the Secretary of State to refer release decisions for so-called top-tier prisoners to an Upper Tribunal or High Court is better than the Secretary of State, a politician, making that decision, but best of all would be to allow the Parole Board to make all release decisions, as recommended by the Law Society. After all, that is what it is there for. According to the Howard League, referral to another level will bring further delay and uncertainty. Why not just let the Parole Board do its job?
Finally, I want to talk about indeterminate-sentence prisoners, who are arguably victims in their own right since almost all have now been forced to overstay their original tariff and 85% have served more than 10 years over tariff, according to the charity UNGRIPP. While I welcome the measure to introduce a new right for IPPs to be eligible for release from licence after three years, the Bill still fails to deal with the 1,312 IPP prisoners who have never been released, and possibly never will, because they are deemed to be unsafe to the public. Last week the Justice Secretary said at an all-party group meeting that these prisoners are likely never to be released, so that is why the Justice Committee’s recommended re-sentencing programme could not be adopted, but what sentences were given for similar cases before and after the advent of IPP prisoners? Surely that is exactly why they should be re-sentenced. The Crown is holding out the false hope of release for these poor people, year after miserable year. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Dr Alice Jill Edwards, argued that we
“must reject the misleading public safety arguments against reviewing these unfair sentences and review all such sentences. Locking people up—and in effect throwing away the keys—is not a solution legally or morally”.
I do not accept the Government’s argument against re-sentencing, and I never will.
]]>