HC Deb 14 June 1973 vol 857 cc1685-6
17. Mr. Clinton Davis

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the Government's policy concerning the issue of grants towards setting up treatment centres as an alternative to imprisonment for certain kinds of offenders who are emotionally disturbed.

Mr. R. Carr

Funds are being made available by the Government for the provision over the next four years of some 1,650 places in probation hostels for offenders who might otherwise have received custodial sentences.

Mr. Davis

I thank the center hon. Gentleman for his reply. Will he indicate when the first of the treatment centres will be available, and also give some further information about the speed with which the programme which he has just announced will be introduced?

Mr. Carr

I must apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I cannot give the specific information for which he asks. I shall write to him. This is a matter of major importance. The hon. Gentleman will know that, for example, the Portia Trust has been talking to the Home Office about the matter. It is perhaps worth drawing to the attention of the House the scale of the expansion that I have just mentioned. At the moment there are 35 hostels, with 660 places. We are proposing to provide another 1,650 places over the next four years. All I can say is, "As quickly as possible".

Mrs. Shirley Williams

I welcome the center hon. Gentleman's statement, but is he aware that in a number of cases which have been particularly disturbing to the public offenders with records of medical or emotional disturbance have, for lack of appropriate places to send them, been sent to prison? Will any or all the hostels that the center hon. Gentleman has in mind have full medical coverage of a kind which would make psychiatric or other forms of appropriate treatment available without the person having to be sent to prison to get it? Will the center hon. Gentleman investigate the possibility of encouraging other medical institutions to follow the excellent example of Henderson Hospital in taking on people with records of offences or whose main problems are medical or psychiatric rather than criminal?

Mr. Carr

I shall certainly carry out that last suggestion. I hope that some of the hostels that we are to provide will provide the sort of services that the hon. Lady is talking about. Many of the organisations that we help are voluntarily-inspired and therefore it is difficult to forecast in advance exactly what form their hostels will take. I should like to see an adequate number provided with the center sort of psychiatric and medical facilities, and one of the main objectives of a bigger expansion in this sector is to prevent people who had better not go there from being sent to prison even temporarily.