HOME OFFICE PENAL ADMINISTRATION

HL Deb 31 January 1979 vol 398 cc250-317

8.3 p.m.

The Earl of LONGFORD rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they agree to the need for a thorough reorganisation of the Home Office in relation to penal matters. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I rise, suitably grateful to preceding speakers for their brevity, which I do not propose to emulate altogether. I must begin by warmly congratulating the new Minister, Lord Boston of Faversham, and the retiring Minister, Lord Harris of Greenwich, who I am so glad is going to speak later, on their new appointments. On behalf of myself and the whole House—both those who are here and the rather larger number who are not with us in the Chamber at the moment—I should like to express my good wishes to those two noble Lords. They are both well known for their all-round ability and public zeal. Lord Harris—and I am sorry that this compliment cannot wait until his return to the Chamber, because I believe we shall see him later—was always most courteous in answering the many questions and speeches which were placed before him in this House; and if I may say so, he was often highly ingeneous. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Boston, will prove a worthy rival.

I shall be dealing mainly with questions relating to prisons, directly or indirectly. That does not mean that I shall be embarking on a general survey of penal reform, treatment and prevention of crime, law and order or the compensation of victims. The House has often heard me on these far-reaching issues and, if I am spared, may suffer a similar fate in the future.

I do not, however, wish to restrict any noble Lord from interpreting the Motion as widely as he chooses. I could not if I wished, but I do not wish. Noble Lords of the utmost eminence are taking part, including my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, and my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who was not only the Permanent Head of the Home Office, but Deputy Chairman of the Prison Commission; and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who was chairman of the Parole Board and is now president of the Probation Officers Association. I hope that before long we shall have a general debate on probation, initiated preferably by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

If it were usual to adopt a text in your Lordships' House, I know one that I would select for this evening: By their fruits ye shall know them". In regard to penal matters—and I hasten to say I am saying nothing about the Home Office outside the penal area—the Home Office has been criticised more and more severely from many disparate quarters. It is a long time since I heard a good word said on their behalf, except by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, but that was part of his professional role, and no doubt it will be discharged with equal passion by the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham.

We have reached a point where the prison governors, in an open letter to the Home Secretary, can say—and I am quoting: The total breakdown of the prison system is imminent". If I said that of course I could be treated as some long-haired or bald-headed crank. But as it is from the prison governors, something more of an answer is to be expected. The prison governors refer unequivocally—and again I am quoting a letter to the Home Secretary—to: a deplorable lack of leadership from the Home Office". In a rather over-ripe experience now of public life, I cannot recall such blunt condemnation of Government administration from those best qualified to offer a professional opinion. So that is where we begin, so to speak, this evening.

It is by no means clear whether the Home Secretary realises the gravity of the situation: the fact that there is not only a short-term but a long-term crisis. Under the pressure of industrial action, the Home Secretary has set up an inquiry with fairly wide terms of reference which I welcomed here when I spoke in November. He has called for a report by March. He seems to feel—and we shall have no doubt a more profound interpretation of his real state of feeling—that the main issue is one of improved remuneration for prison officers.

I entirely agree, as I have said before now, that prison officers, and, for that matter, prison governors, should be remunerated much more adequately and should receive the increase quickly, so there is no difference between my point of view and what may be the point of view of the Home Secretary on that matter. I am convinced, however, that the increase of pay, though important, is scratching the surface of the problem. Anyone who reads the governors' letter to the Home Secretary will realise that there are much more fundamental issues at stake. The opinion was expressed in an expert commentary by the organisation known as NACRO on the report of the House of Commons Committee published last year that it was full of excellent, if cautious, suggestions. It was said that this House of Commons report, excellent though it was, was not likely to be effective unless what was called the political will came into existence as it has not existed up to now. This assessment that our trouble up to now, the fundamental trouble, has been the absence of a political will is one on which we ought to pause for a moment.

It could of course suggest that individual Ministers were to blame. I am not taking that line tonight; I am not here to praise or blame Ministers. I am speaking at some length and I have not the time, therefore, to pay the tributes which sometimes clutter up these speeches. I shall, therefore, proceed without praising or blaming. For a real explanation of what has gone wrong, I look beyond the individual failing of Ministers. Most of these Ministers—and I am now casting my mind back to at least 10 Home Secretaries with whom I have had dealings since I became actively involved in penal reform—and their underlings have shown their capacity elsewhere. The present Home Secretary, for example, did a very good job in Northern Ireland on the whole and has shown himself a brave man in peace and war. I would say similar things of the civil servants concerned, but not with quite so much information as I should wish, because we are not allowed to meet them. We are told that we Members of the House of Lords are not allowed access to the advisers of the noble Lord, Lord Boston. That seems to be the present situation and therefore one cannot praise them unreservedly as one does not know them, but I am sure they are excellent persons.

The essence of what I am submitting is that there are structural defects in the whole Home Office—the whole set-up. That really is one of the main causes of our penal provisions being the least satisfactory and least edifying of all our social provisions. I realise, of course, as I have said many times in this House, that this period of steadily increasing crime is one which imposes special strains on the leading people in the Home Office, whether they be Ministers or officials; but that is a reason for giving even more attention, and not less, to getting the set-up right—and the set-up at least does lie within our power, although the crime rate may not, or not obviously.

Let us take first the ministerial issue. It has been clear for a long time that the Home Secretary of the day, irrespective of his personality and his Party, is far too busy with other matters, of course the present time is an exceptional case but, even apart from this kind of industrial crisis, the Home Secretary is far too busy with other matters to give the kind of leadership with regard to the penal system which the governors beg for and which they find so signally absent. No other Minister, under any arrangement we have seen hitherto in the Home Office, has sufficient authority to provide that leadership in the absence of its being supplied by the Home Secretary.

In the result, the real conduct of these affairs has fallen to the officials. Most of them move in and out of the Prison Department without acquiring much first-hand knowledge of prisons. I must be careful here, but I have never actually met a prisoner during many years of prison visiting who has actually met a Home Office official. I do not doubt that these Home Office officials occasionally visit them—perhaps in disguise, for all I know—but at any rate I have never met a prisoner who was conscious of having met a Home Office official.

It would be ludicrous to assert that what I called on an earlier occasion "these high-minded birds of passage" could be expected to formulate far- reaching schemes of penal improvement. It is just not part of their occupational prospectus. On the other hand, I can only use the words of my old master who was a well known figure here—Sir William, later Lord, Beveridge. He was asked by the War Office what he thought of their arrangements for using skilled manpower which he had been asked to investigate. He paused for some time and then replied: "A miserable show." He could not resist saying it again, because he was so pleased with the phrase: "A miserable show."—Now I have said it twice, and perhaps that is enough. The ministerial bottleneck strangles not only strategic planning but human lives.

Today's Home Secretary, in my recent experience—in fact in the last week—has taken exactly two months to confirm the negative finding of a Home Office committee regarding the parole of a prisoner whose circumstances were already well known to the Home Office, and at the end of the two months' deliberation a prison governor told me that he thought the recommendation of that committee would probably have moved across 20 desks by a process of what I believe is known in those circles as "passing the parcel". At any rate, two months are spent on this process and at the end of it all no reasons are given for this negative conclusion. No indication is provided that the preoccupied Minister, for all his personal humanity—and I hope anyone who reports me on this point will not forget to quote that sentence also—has any conception at all of the human being whose fate he determines.

On the ministerial aspect, I have been sure for some time that there is at least one obvious improvement to be undertaken. It is essential that a Minister of Cabinet rank should be publicly designated for penal affairs. I say in passing that I am not dogmatic about the title to be eventually chosen, but the phrase "penal affairs" indicates my argument. The new Minister would certainly be the ministerial head of the Prison Service. He should also be responsible for the all-important Probation and After-Care Service and for penal policy in a general sense. In the last resort, the ultimate responsibility for everything coming under the Home Office would have to remain with the Home Secretary.

After a good deal of reflection—there were arguments both ways—I have concluded that it would definitely be best if the Minister for Penal Affairs were actually a Minister in the Cabinet. You could have a Minister of Cabinet rank who was not a member of the Cabinet. There are plenty of examples of that, but I would submit that it would be best if he were a member. There are plenty of precedents for having two Cabinet Ministers within a single Department, the latest of them coming from the Department of Health and Social Security at the present time.

It seems to be agreed by everyone, including the Home Secretary, that the resources hitherto available to the Prison Service have been inadequate and should be expanded. The new Minister for Penal Affairs should be able to exert valuable pressure for more adequate resources in the Cabinet. He would do all this much more effectively if he were himself a member. I do not need to be told—perhaps I am one of those who least need to be told—that, whether in the Cabinet or out of it, the cause of penal reform is never likely to be a short cut to popularity. It has been said all too often in cynical moments that there are no votes in penal reform; but in the long run a wise penal system is in the interests not only of the criminal but of the general public. The Minister for Penal Affairs, actively assisted, I would hope, by his colleagues from the Prime Minister down, should rise to the challenge of educating public opinion in a fashion far beyond the capacity of any hopelessly overburdened Home Secretary.

I turn back to the prison governors. They may well feel that the ministerial structure is not their affair: at any rate, in anything of theirs I have read, they do not comment on it. They concentrate on the structure of officialdom at head office and a relationship between that structure and the structures at regional and prison level. The governors insist, in the first place—rightly I am sure—that their autonomy is being steadily diminished. They say that this tendency should be sharply reversed and they should get more, not less, independence.

There are admittedly two sides to this. On the one hand, there are governors and staff; and, if I may say so, prisoners and those who try to help them are beset with endless pettifogging restrictions—some directly imposed by the Home Office and others giving effect to what are supposed to be Home Office requirements. For example, it took me six weeks to get permission for a hand-painted Christmas card to be sent to me by a prisoner whom I was visiting regularly. It took almost two years for another prisoner to receive a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the delay being due to the fact that the donor did not know the man before he went to prison. I could give many more examples. For example, I met a prisoner a few days ago who recently won the Koestler Award for one of the outstanding literary achievements of the year in the prison world. While he was drawing up notes for this literary prize-winning novel, he was twice penalised for possessing unauthorised note-books. One could go on and on with these horror tales of pettifogging interference.

One can say: "That is all due to the Home Office", and there is a certain truth in that, but it is not the whole truth. On the other hand, I know of a prisoner who, in an earlier prison, had been allowed to have his small child sitting on his knee. But when the child came and sat on her father's knee at the next prison, the child was sharply interfered with and removed from the paternal knee, from which followed a good deal of blood and tears. In fact, there was quite a battle. That small example illustrates the fact that there has to be some harmony between the practices in the different prisons. Therefore, I do not think this is only a question of throwing the reins around the horse's neck and letting the governors decide things as they wish; that might be going too far.

The inspectorate should be made a much more effective instrument than it is at present. As in most other branches of administration, a balance must clearly be struck between administration and local autonomy. But I say with absolute conviction that, at the present time, the centralising tendencies are having things all their own way, and the autonomy of the governors ought to be much more strongly asserted.

There are many other defects in the present arrangements which I can do no more than mention. The governors find themselves dealing with at least seven divisions within the Prison Department, which is bad enough, but even so they are not in direct relationship with the Establishments Division and crucial problems, such as those of staffing and industrial relations, are effectively outside the control of the governors. As the governors again point out in the open letter which they wrote to the Home Secretary, the Director-General of the Prison Service is not responsible nor accountable for the conditions and service of his staff, so that he is by no means the master of his own house, even under the Minister.

The relationship with the Probation Service is also of the first importance. Many of us believe—and I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, believes—that the greatest penal issue of the immediate future is how to arrange a massive shift of resources from custodial to non-custodial remedies. This is obviously not an issue which the new form of prison commission, department, or whatever we like to call it, can settle unaided, but it is one which cannot seriously be tackled without the new prison commission being involved and bringing its expert knowledge to bear at every point. As I suggested earlier, the Minister for Penal Affairs should clearly carry the ministerial responsibility for co-ordinating the indispensable contributions of the Prison Service and the Probation Service. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has given special attention to these problems, and I shall not be too dogmatic ahead of his speech.

The following propositions, at least, can, I hope, be acceptable in principle. First, in regard to penal matters, the Home Office needs a thorough reorganisation, in the light of the grave situation and the almost universal criticism. Secondly, a Minister of Cabinet rank specifically responsible for penal affairs should be appointed forthwith, though the ultimate responsibility for all Home Office matters must rest with the Home Secretary. Thirdly, a professional body, subject only to Ministers, with a professional head, should take over the work of the Prison Department. Fourthly, much more autonomy should be given to governors, along with a strengthened inspectorate. Much more opportunity should be provided for the constructive role of prison officers. Fifthly, the lines of communication between head office, regions—if they continue—and prisons should be much simplified. It should be understood that the new prison authority would be responsible for its own staff and industrial relations.

Of course, I am not arguing that if you get the structure right automatically you get the policy right, let alone its operation. A good structure does not guarantee a good policy; but a bad structure, such as we have now, guarantees a bad policy, as I am afraid we possess at present. As well as the great problem of how to obtain the necessary resources and the other problem of how to distribute those resources wisely between custodial and non-custodial treatment, the still deeper problem may be felt of how to make the whole thing vastly more human, sensitive and ethical. These problems will not disappear, however we reshuffle the cards at the Home Office. But unless we carry out a drastic overhaul there, we are not really giving ourselves a chance. The new Minister comes in at what may well prove to be a moment of destiny. I can only say to him what I said at the beginning, and I repeat it still more earnestly now that I have explained what seems to me the grim reality in front of him, "With all my heart, I wish you well".

8.25 p.m.

Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE

My Lords, I should like to begin by adding my welcome to the noble Lord who will be playing his second innings this evening and replying to this debate. We sat together recently on the Select Committee on the Bill of Rights, and it is very good to see him on the Front Bench. He needs no warning from me that the occasions when he speaks on behalf of his new Department will not always be very confortable ones. He has probably already discovered that the Home Office is invariably wrong, from whatever angle the critic may be looking at it. The only thing is that the angles vary a good deal.

I should also like to add my word of appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich. I understand that, freed from the cares of ministerial office, he has been able to miscalculate the speed at which this debate eventually came on, but I know that he will be joining us later. I believe that his period as Minister of State in the Home Office was a notable one, and it is all to the good that he should feel free to make his personal contribution on an occasion like this, and even in the pages of the Daily Telegraph.

It is with some diffidence that I am joining in the debate, since for a number of years I was the Permanent Under-Secretary of State in the Home Office, and must take my share of responsibility for the state of affairs which is causing the noble Earl so much concern. But I felt that I ought to put my name down, partly because at one stage of my career I had some concern with questions of the machinery of Government, and mainly, as we have been reminded, because in the dim and distant past I served a period as Deputy Chairman of the Prison Commission. It seemed to me that this was particularly relevant as, for reasons which I can well understand, the noble Earl has tended to concentrate on the prisons in introducing this debate this evening.

The Prison Service certainly faces most formidable problems. I suppose it is hardly to be wondered at that the community puts prisons fairly well down the list when resources are scarce, and the persistent shortage of secure accommodation, with all that that involves, is certainly one of the main causes of present difficulties. It is not to be forgotten that bad conditions for prisoners make for bad working conditions for the officers. But as well, there are the problems of coping with prisoners convicted of terrorist offences, and the scale on which they are being dealt with is a comparatively modern phenomenon. There are now life sentence prisoners in numbers far exceeding anything that we have been used to in the past—nearly 1,400 of them—and they are not all let out after nine years, as the Press seem often to suppose. In a reply given to me today, I learned that 163 prisoners have already been in custody for more than 10 years—that is, life sentence prisoners. Then there are the alcoholics and the mentally disordered who ought not to be in prison at all. For the rest, the fact is that during the past decade the actual proportion of convicted offenders who are sent to prison has just about halved, which means that those who do go to prison are, more and more, the failures of the penal system who, before ending up in prison, have been through the whole gamut of non-custodial penalties.

Against this kind of background, it is not surprising that the staffs, scattered around the country as they are in comparatively small groups, sometimes feel that life is treating them hardly and that they are members of a service forgotten by an uncomprehending and ill-informed community. Nor is it surprising that there have been cries for reorganisation. When things get difficult, it is often tempting to think that they might be put right by some measure of reorganisation. I fear that experience suggests that this is not necessarily so. Looking at Government itself, we have perhaps seen rather too much for our comfort of Departments being put together and then taken apart again, to be quite sure that reorganisation of itself necessarily solves many problems.

Mr. Justice May and his colleagues in the working group to which the noble Earl referred will be going into all these issues, but I should like to make two points at this stage which I think are of some relevance. The first relates to the suggestion that the right course for prisons would be to revive the old Prison Commission, or something like it. On this, I should like to say that it seems to me that there are many misconceptions floating around about the Prison Commissioners. Through a golden haze of memory there seems to emerge a picture of a body of independent, professional men dedicating the whole of their working lives to the Prison Service. This is compared with the make-up of the present high command for the Prison Service, whom the noble Earl a moment ago referred to as "high-minded birds of passage." On another occasion, when in a less charitable mood, I think that the noble Earl referred to them as "itinerant civil servants," but I fear that the comparison really is not quite like this.

When I arrived in the Home Office, Alexander Maxwell had just come back there after serving for a period as Chairman of the Prison Commissioners, and he went on to become an extremely distinguished head of the office. He was succeeded by Harold Scott, who later went on to become the Permament Secretary of two great Departments of State and eventually Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. Lionel Fox, who had a long innings, and who was indeed an outstanding chairman, was himself an administrator, if I may be forgiven for using so old-fashioned a word, and not a product of the Prison Service. Indeed, when I first knew him he was acting Receiver for the Metropolitan Police District.

Of the five Commissioners in my time, three of us were administrators—again using that word—and two were from within the Prison Service. There is not all that much difference between that set-up and the composition of the present Prisons Board. There is, however, one sharp difference between the Commissioners and the Board; namely, that the members of the Board are of a good deal higher status than ever the Commissioners were. The present chairman of the Board, for example, ranks as a Deputy Secretary. The chairman of the Prison Commission never did.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord on that point, one of the complaints that I have made in this House for many years is that prison governors were never given sufficient status. If one looks at it in terms of honours, I cannot remember—although I am subject to correction—a prison governor who was knighted while serving as a prison governor. For a long time, no honours have ever been handed out to prison governors. They have been treated as a slightly inferior form of life by these eminent officials in the Home Office.

Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE

My Lords, happily it was not for the eminent officials in the Home Office to hand out honours. That was another's responsibility. I am afraid that this is not a matter for which I could assume any responsibility. What I can say, however, is that the Prison Service members of the present Prisons Board rank as Under-Secretaries, or near Under-Secretaries. The Prison Service members who were Prison Commissioners were much below that level in the old days of the Prison Commission. Perhaps it is hardly necessary for me to add that the old Prison Commissioners were not given a free hand to decide what demands they should make on national resources and to settle condi- tions of service for themselves in splendid isolation.

My second point is that the noble Earl's Question is perfectly right in its assumption that concern with prisons cannot be divorced from other aspects of penal policy. You cannot decide what you are trying to do in the prisons in isolation from what you are trying to do in developing alternatives to imprisonment and keeping people out of prison. The plain fact is that the way in which the Prison Commission was separately organised simply became out of date in the increasingly complicated pattern which evolved to grapple with the wide range of problems arising from the growth of crime and from the changing attitude of the community to what penal policy might attempt to achieve. The one thing which is clear to me is that overall responsibility for this penal policy must remain with the Home Secretary, with his concern for the preservation of the Queen's peace and all that that implies and which is absolutely central to the role of the Home Secretary in this country.

In the prisons, we are concerned with individuals who have lost their freedom by due legal process but who are still human beings entitled to some measure of dignity and respect; no two of them exactly alike; and pretty well all of them due to return to society, as 1,500 of them do every week. I simply cannot see how a Home Secretary could hand over to another Minister responsibilities for the broad treatment of categories of prisoners or for deciding the fate of individuals.

Just to illustrate this point, I think that the Home Secretary of the day was bound to take a direct responsibility for deciding whether there should be a number of separate units for housing particularly dangerous prisoners, or whether there should be a single fortress in the Isle of Wight, or somewhere, or whether some other solution altogether should be adopted, or, another example, whether prissoners who are nearing the end of a long sentence can properly be temporarily released for work in the community or on spells of leave. It seems to me that only the Home Secretary can take the final decision, whatever advice he might receive, on whether the time has come to release a life prisoner on licence—not on parole, another popular misconception. Only the Home Secretary of the day, I submit, could have decided whether the Price sisters should be moved to Northern Ireland. The Home Secretary can delegate certain day-to-day responsibilities to his Minister of State, but I fear that I cannot go along with the proposition that there is a place here for another Minister for Penal Affairs of Cabinet rank or within the Cabinet, nor do I believe that such a Minister in second place to the Home Secretary would have any greater success in getting more resources out of the Government for penal matters. I am now leaving what the noble Earl said. Nor at the other extreme can I see what responsibilities could be handed over, as some have suggested, to an outside quasi-independent body not directly answerable to Parliament.

Responsibilities here are of a totally different nature from those involved in providing, say, electric power or running railway trains—or not running railway trains, as the case may be. Indeed, I am left in some doubt whether there is really a separate role of management which could be divorced in some way from other responsibilities and carried out better than under the present arrangements, and whether the real causes of our problems do not lie elsewhere. But we shall have to await the findings of Mr. Justice May and his Committee. I see from today's papers, for example, that he has received proposals from the Liberal Party which do not bear much resemblance to the suggestions I have been putting forward this evening, and no doubt he will be getting a wide range of evidence from other sources.

There is certainly no ground for complacency, and no one would dream of claiming that the present set-up is in all respects ideal. I personally hope that the committee will have something to say on some of the other questions which cause me concern. Is the present prison staff college, for example, susceptible of improvement? Should more be done to involve the local community in the separate prisons and borstals? Should the rather odd form of Whitley Council in the Prison Service be overhauled? Are the relations between the prison medical service and the National Health Service the best that can be devised? Should something be done—and I take the noble Earl's point here—to improve the relations between the Prison Service and the Home Office establishment divisions? Is there a case for examining whether accountable management, in the sense that we on the Fulton Committee understood it in a Civil Service context, has been sufficiently developed? Have prison governors been given clear enough ideas of what they are expected to achieve, and enough discretion as to the way they are doing it? In closing this little list I am bound to go along with the noble Earl in expressing my wonder that the committee is expected to reach an answer to all these questions and other related questions by March, given that their remit extends to Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as to England and Wales.

My Lords, I have tended to speak mainly about prisons, and although my theme has been that they really cannot be considered in isolation from other aspects of penal policy, I have said very little indeed about those aspects. There may well be a case for looking at the parole system and for seeing how this plunge which we took into the unknown has worked out in its first few years. There is, too, the long-term problem of the future of the Probation Service, nearly 400 of whose members, incidentally, work in the prisons; but my noble friend Lord Hunt is well equipped to speak on both of those aspects. I certainly must not embark on these issues and on the link-up with the Home Secretary's concern with the criminal law and with the police, on which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, may have some words to say, when I have already spoken for much longer than I intended, and that on a day when we have had a debate on the desirability of shorter speeches!

I should like to end by saying that although I have differed on a number of points from what the noble Earl said, we all owe him a debt of gratitude, with his continuing interest in penal matters, for raising this interesting Question tonight. But I should also like to say that there are underlying problems here which go a good deal wider and deeper than the organisation of the Department in which I was proud to serve.

8.46 p.m.

Lord INGLEWOOD

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, who intro- duced this debate put the emphasis in his speech on prisons, but he invited other noble Lords to widen the field, and I should like to submit that any review of the Home Office organisation affecting penal matters must include some reference to the police—the crime detection agency without whom there would be fewer prisoners, empty prisons and in consequence fewer of the problems which we have been talking about for the last three-quarters of an hour.

While, like the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, I should be opposed to any transfer from the Home Secretary of responsibility for the police and other services which come under the general heading of penal matters, I should like to know more about the current Home Office organisation and attitude towards police responsibilities. Some of the events of recent times have aroused misgivings that police thinking and organisation is falling behind the times and becoming out of date. In saying that I am not at all criticising police officers in the lower ranks, whom most of us admire greatly and who are taken as a model by many foreign countries. I am referring to what appear to be weaknesses in the system of organisation seen against, for example, what has happened recently in Lancashire. As we debated that story not so long ago I do not want to go over the same ground again, but it cannot be denied that misgivings have arisen.

Where are these weaknesses to be found? I think one is in the constitution and organisation of the inspectorate. Of course the inspectorate is not responsible for the Metropolitan Police, but it is responsible for all the other police forces in the country. The inspectors are, I believe, all former chief constables of distinction, but they have virtually no powers—or at least so they tell one after they have retired. So far as I can learn, they make no unannounced visits, and the inspection of our provincial police forces is largely carried out on an "old boy" basis, which is all right when all goes well, but when they run into difficulties that system is not quite good enough.

The Secretary of State also has few powers. Forty-two forces plus the Metropolitan Police—that is 43 forces in all—are in a certain sense independent of him and he is in no position to give them instructions, except in the very narrow field where Parliament has given him powers. Hence his communications with the chief officers of police consist mostly of recommendations. Up to a point again the system undoubtedly works well, but there can be difficulties. Not having the police too closely tied to the government of the country is, on balance, a good thing, but it does produce its own problems and we must look at them. For example, does an inspector make an annual report on chief officers when he inspects the force?

I have asked the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, that question across the Floor of the House on a previous occasion and, not having obtained a very clear answer, I am now trying it on his successor. Does an inspector in his annual inspection make a report on chief officers? If not, he surely ought to do so. Is the Minister happy about the general run of relations between chief officers and police authorities, the system which was set up under the 1964 Police Act? I would submit that police authorities in general are too large to be efficient. One rarely hears chief officers pay compliments to their police authorities. I have heard them do so, but it is rare. And similarly, on the other side, I have rarely heard police authorities say they consider the conduct of business and the example set by the chief constable as helpful as they would hope it to be.

Having said that, let us look at the background against which chief constables and police authorities have to work. The wording of the 1964 Act—which is our parliamentary responsibility, and not theirs—says that police authorities are responsible for maintenance of an adequate and efficient police force in their area. Then in the next section, it goes on to say that such police forces shall be under the direction and control of the chief constable. In practice, it must be extremely difficult to draw a dividing line between those two fields of responsibility, even with the best will in the world, because if one party or the other is slightly unreasonable you have the beginnings of trouble.

There is another flaw in the police authorities, as I see it, which is that there is no independent view. You have two-thirds county councillors and one-third magistrates. It has seemed to me for some time that there might be an advantage in having, say, not more than two members who are genuinely independent of either of those two lobbies, the council lobby or the magistrates' lobby. Such members would have to be very carefully chosen. In order to show that I have given thought to this, I make the suggestion that they might be chosen for a period of years from among the deputy lieutenants of the county. But some independent view where the member is not responsible to the electorate or to his fellow councillors, or for the voting of the money, or again is not a representative of the judiciary could be an advantage.

I come to my last point, and I am really hoping to be short on this day when everyone has been so exhorted earlier on. My last point concerns the Police Advisory Board, an organisation which was set up under the 1964 Act, and about which we know very little indeed. What I may say, therefore, may not all be correct, but if so I can only say I am sorry and it would perhaps be better if we all knew just a little more. The members are drawn entirely from what one might call the police lobby, representatives of the staff associations, councillors, magistrates, Home Office officials, and the Minister or his Minister of State in the Chair. Again you will notice that there is no member of that body who is truly independent and I would suggest again that there would be an advantage. The police world is very inward-looking. If there could be two or three members of great eminence who brought a different experience of life from those categories from whom all the members at the moment are drawn it could add much.

No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, may be able to enlighten us here, but I am told that the full meetings of the board occur at the most twice, and sometimes only once, a year, that it is not always the case that a Minister takes the Chair, and that much of the business is in fact done through appointing subcommittees to study a subject, and then considering their reports. I would feel that with such membership, and particularly with the strength of the staff associations among the members, the decisions come to are much more likely to be compromises than anything very clear. Certainly the only report that I have ever seen—which I hasten to say was sent to me by the Home Office, and not extracted from any waste paper basket—was a very weak compromise document.

Of course, a large amount of the work of planning police forces must be confidential, but, apart from that, there is room, I think, for more information to reach us both from the Home Office and again at the local level about what the police in these difficult times are trying to do. They will not get the support they deserve from the general public until there is rather more knowledge; without that knowledge there cannot be sympathy. When I suggest independent minds, it is no more than the non-executive director principle which is common to all big and successful public companies.

What we have heard recently has been due largely to the fact that a Royal Commission is sitting and some of the evidence submitted has reached the Press. Instead of a flow of information about routine business of what the Home Office is trying to do for us, we have heard from the Commissioner the age-old police cry of more men and more powers; from the Police Federation, in their propaganda statements, the age-old police cry of more pay and more powers; and the last time I read of anything uttered by the Superintendents' Association, the chairman or president was crying out for less to do with politicians; that is an age-old police cry, too. Of course, some of the police do look on politicians as something to be rated with the lesser criminals! I should like to think that we could get more regular authoritative information than we do at the present time, and that the people of this country have not got to depend quite so much on extracts from evidence sent in to Royal Commissions and headlines in the Press.

No one during this time has spoken of the need for better quality intake, better training, rewards for proficiency, or particular ways of winning the suppport of the public—no; one man has. The really responsible body in this field, the association of Chief Officers of Police, maintains throughout dead silence. It may have been a good tradition in the past, but I would like to think that today they would let us know rather more of the way they see things. The Home Office and the police do appear to be too inward-looking. I am in no way hinting at a breakdown, such as the noble Earl quoted earlier on as something which was feared by prison governors—not at all, because we have a Police Service in this country that none of us would like to change for the Police Service in any other. None the less, I think it could be a better service still, and I hope your Lordships think I have made the case that in any reorganisation of penal matters in the responsibility of the Home Office, there should be reference to the police as well as to the Prison Service.

8.58 p.m.

Lord HUNT

My Lords, I should not wish to be left out of the welcome that has been offered to the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, on taking high office in that Department of State about which I can claim to be the least ignorant of all the Departments of State during my time in your Lordships' House. I would formally and sincerely thank my noble friend Lord Longford for providing us with the opportunity to discuss organisational improvementsin our penalsystem, and I am flattered that he should think that I might be able to make a worthwhile contribution. I am not at all sure that that is likely to be the case. It is true that I have one advantage, which perhaps my noble friend, Lord Allen of Abbeydale and other civil servants at the time would have seen as a disadvantage, of having spent 6½ years lodged in the Home Office while I was with the Parole Board. In case he is anxious about that remark, I would hasten to say that I was full of admiration for the high abilities, the friendliness and the helpfulness of all the officials with whom I had to deal then, and with whom I still deal peripherally as President of the National Association of Probation Officers.

Both Lord Longford and Lord Allen were talking at length and mainly about the Prison Service. It is very tempting for me to offer some remarks that I should have liked to make, but in the interests of brevity I will not follow them but try to strike a middle line between their contrasting views. Therefore, I shall, as I was invited to do by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, move straight on to the parole system. Here I am in danger of speaking after too long an interval since I was chair- man of the Board. However, I can claim to see it now from the viewpoint of the Probation Service, which has to make the parole system work and which is also involved with the problems of the families of prisoners who are eligible for parole. It is a different perspective.

Of course, an internal review has been in progress in the Home Office for many months and I hope—I have no means of knowing—that it will shortly see the light of day in the form of a Green Paper for public debate. Given that prospect, I see no case at present for an independent review such as was recommended by the House of Commons Expenditure Committee.

I hold the view that, by and large, parole has served the public and the nation well during the 11 years of its existence. I think that it has become fashionable to "knock" parole and there has been too much knocking of parole of late. There surely can be no denying the benefit of the conditional early release of some 35,000 prisoners over that period of 11 years, given that the recall rate has been, on average, well below 10 per cent. and that of that 10 per cent. only about half have been recalled for fresh offences during the currency of their licence. I am told that at any one time now some 3,500 offenders are with us in the community serving the rest of their sentence outside rather than inside. I would guess that that number could fill about eight reasonably large prisons.

However, the two main areas of criticism—the anxiety-making slowness in decision-making and the denial of reasons for refusal of parole—are still valid and overdue for reform. There is a great deal that I could say about this, but I shall limit myself to the Question posed on the Order Paper: whether, and if so how, changes in Home Office organisation might help to solve these problems and otherwise improve the parole system. I am inclined to think that progress in both these matters might now lie in decentralising much of the centralised work to regional boards contiguous with the Prison Service regions. Only a limited number of cases, which would have to be judged by carefully contrived criteria, would be referred to the national Board—it now handles at least 5,000 cases a year, which is far too many—which would also be charged with providing a forum for liaison between the regional boards and the local committees. The national Board would have oversight over consistency in decision-making, and be the authority in matters of principle and general practice.

Talking of practice, I believe that the time has come, after 11 years of operation, to dispense with much of the elaborate and time-consuming processing of cases which is carried out in the Home Office parole unit. It is far more elaborate, and the case dossiers are far more voluminous than anything I have seen in other countries which operate comparable systems and with no less success than we do. It was quite essential in the early years, but the great body of knowledge acquired by the board and the committees about the types of offence and offender and the problems of reconciling the interests of prisoners with those of the general public, strengthens the case for simplifying and speeding up the system now.

At the same time, I am not one of those who make a case for changing the principle of discretion in granting parole or for changing the principle that formal responsibility for the decision to grant parole must rest with the Home Secretary, on grounds of his accountability to Parliament.

Before turning to my main point, I should like to say how glad I was to see that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has turned up. He was inadvertently almost responsible for making me a defaulter this evening. I should like to offer him publicly, as I have already done personally, my good wishes on his new appointment as Chairman of the Parole Board. He was sitting a short time ago on the Cross Benches and I was about to say how delighted I was that he had come to join us. I am not sure of his real intention, but he will be very welcome if he decides to come.

I shall be straying from the strict terms of the Question of the noble Earl, Lord Longford, but he has very kindly said that I might offer a few thoughts which go wider than the ambit of the Home Office. I am not one of those who would equate the book of my friend and one-time colleague Sir Robert Mark with the Gospel according to St. Mark, but I did find a useful quotation in it which I propose to use. He was quoting at length from his BBC Dimbleby Lecture in 1966 and was pointing out that the prevention and investigation of crime—which, of course, was his particular province—is only part of the system of justice. He referred to four stages: the enactment of criminal laws; the task of the police to enforce them; the criminal trial and, in his own words, what to do with the guilty all of which your Lordships would say with me is obvious. However, he went on: Each of these stages is the province of a different group of people. None of these groups is obliged to give much thought to the problems of the others or to consider the working of the system as a whole. This"— suggested Sir Robert— is unfortunate, because the different parts are intimately connected". That passage was Sir Robert Mark's cue for launching into some trenchant comments about the law, about lawyers—crooked or otherwise—the system of trial and the question of punishment. But I am using it as my cue to suggest that there could be, in logic, a case for a Ministry of Justice which would have in its purview all those four stages. I hasten to say that I do not believe that so drastic a reorganisation in our machinery of government, which would amount to rather more in principle than a mere large-scale administrative merger, is either desirable or acceptable. I fancy that the basic tenet of the independence of the Judiciary would make it suspect. Nor do I think that mergers of the executive services, which perform distinctive tasks and have specialist skills, are the answer in any organic changes at the level of central or local government. I am very unhappy about the present generic training for the Probation Service and the social services. From all I have heard about it, the merging of the Probation Service in Scotland with the social services has been a positive disservice to penal treatment.

However, I believe that Sir Robert Mark's thesis calls for more interaction through continuous consultation and, where appropriate, co-ordination at both central and local government levels between all Departments and agencies which are involved in penal matters, in particular in the first and most important stage, that of preventing crime.

I believe that an authoritative link is needed in central Government, both to ensure co-related action and to demonstrate the need to emulate it in practical ways throughout the country in order to highlight the seriousness of crime among the nation's many other problems. I should like to see an inter-departmental committee consisting of Ministers and senior civil servants from all those Departments of State involved in, or able to contribute towards action in, the prevention of crime, the treatment of offenders and, not least, the interest of victims of crime. As an earnest of its importance in the affairs of State, the committee might be served by a secretary assigned by the Cabinet Secretariat. I suggest that its chairman should be a senior Home Office Minister, and that the committee should be answerable to the Home Secretary.

Apart from departmental action in Whitehall, I would also lay on that committee the task of stimulating interaction in local government and circulating practical ideas for crime prevention. The police cannot fulfil that first-stage task alone. It calls for massive support from other services and agencies as well as from the general public. I do not think that there is enough talking together—let alone acting in concert—between the various agencies which have, or should have, the same objective of preventing crime; for instance, between the Probation Service and the police.

I am delighted that this year Mr. John Alderson, who is the Chief Constable for Devon and Cornwall, is to address the annual conference of the National Association of Probation Officers. There is a great deal to be learned from his experiences in communal policing. I shall not give the details here. But it is perhaps not without significance that, whereas juvenile crime has continued to soar elsewhere, the number of offences attributable to juveniles in Exeter has been held to 4 per cent. of the total.

Returning to the Motion, I wonder whether, notwithstanding the Crime Policy Planning Committee and the unit which serves it, there really is effective liaison in the Home Office between those Depart- ments and divisions which deal with crime in its various aspects. Those doubts—and as noble Lords have gathered, I have doubts—were recently renewed during a visit to the Probation Service in Dorset. I was informed there of a recent increase of 100 in the establishment of the constabulary in that county following a visit by the Chief Constable to the Police Department in the Home Office. I do not for one moment question the need for that increment. What I do question is whether the consequences of that reinforcement were taken sufficiently into account—that is, more arrests, more offenders brought to the courts, with consequent increases in the workload imposed on the Probation Service in making more social inquiries and in supervising more court orders; all that without any parallel additional resources in manpower or amenities being granted to the Probation Service.

That brings me to my last point: the Probation Service, especially in view of the Government's explicit policy of shifting the emphasis in the treatment of offenders from closed penal establishments to a range of alternatives in the community. The present establishment of just over 5,000 has been virtually frozen for the past two years. It will have to be increased if the more difficult offenders are to be placed under closer supervision in the community. There are welcome moves in some prisons to involve prison officers in welfare work, in collaboration with probation officers serving in prison welfare departments. To me there is nothing outrageous—indeed there is a precedent for it elsewhere—in the notion that this collaboration might be extended outside prisons, with some officers from the Prison Service being seconded to the Probation Service in order to meet the need to supervise greater numbers of more difficult prisoners.

However that may be, I believe that, despite its understandable reservations about having, in order to match the Government's professed intention, to switch its own emphasis from the relaxed tradition of after-care to the more disciplined character of supervision in some cases, the Probation Service would be prepared to accept the additional responsibility and the extra work, always provided that it was adequately manned and appropriately trained and equipped for the job.

9.14 p.m.

Lord GARDINER

My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Longford, for enabling us to discuss this important Question tonight. Perhaps I ought to say that although President of the Howard League for Penal Reform and Vice-President of the Institute for the Study of Frequent Delinquency, naturally any views I shall express are entirely my own. The subject matter is a little difficult because the proposition advanced is that there are certain things wrong in our penal system and that all, or some of them, are due to wrong organisation in the Home Office. Therefore, one has to ask oneself first what one thinks there is wrong in our penal system, and then see whether or not the alternatives provided by the noble Earl would be the right answers.

To be realistic, one has to start with the proposition that a country gets the penal system that it is prepared to pay for. The difficulty, or so much of the difficulty, has always been resources. Very largely we have simply to persuade the public, who are not easy to be persuaded, that homes and hostels even in their own area are more sensibly provided than more prisons. Of course, the first requirement is preventatives of crime. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and I have too often said to repeat again that it is clear in any police station you like to go into and look at the facts, that if the conviction rates goes up crime goes down; if the conviction rate goes down then crime goes up. Every Government since the war have failed to increase the police force to deal with the increase in crime. However, that of course is not in any way due to the organisation of the Home Office.

The second question is how, having provided for an adequate police force, you then deal with the resources which are available for, broadly speaking, the treatment of offenders. When I say "the treatment of offenders" I am not using "treatment" in the sense of doing them good, or rehabilitating them, but the way in which they are disposed of. Are they to be sent to prison, or disposed of in some other way? At the present time there is an unhappy dispute going on, as no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Harris, knows, between my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and practically everybody else. When I say practically everybody else, I cannot think of anybody that I know who shares the Home Secretary's view. The Howard League of Penal Reform, the ISTD, NACRO, the Expenditure Committee of the other place, the Liberal Party, and many others take the view that we are spending much too much of our resources on building more and more prisons when what we ought to be concerned with are alternatives to imprisonment.

I have heard the noble Lord, Lord Harris, play down the numbers slightly, but I am talking about tens of thousands in prisons, if you include all the fine defaulters, maintenance defaulters, alcoholics, cannabis users, those convicted of soliciting, those convicted of sleeping rough, and even those awaiting deportation because they have served the sentence imposed on them by the courts but they are kept in prison because they cannot get an answer from the Home Office as to whether or not a deportation order is to be made.

Then of course there are all the passive inadequates. I have never heard any very satisfactory definition of them, but I remember in the first conference ever held by the British Institute of Human Rights that the chairman of the conference, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kilbrandon, said this: Most prisoners are not like you and me. I was struck very forcibly in Edinburgh prison when I went into a room where a lot of men were sitting in silence. They were doing a job which you don't see very often now. They were sewing mail bags. I said to the governor, ' Are these men not allowed to speak to one another? ' He said, ' Of course they are, but these are people who never speak. They are solitary. They are non-communicators. They have no friends. They have nobody to visit them. They never get a letter, and when they leave prison they won't be out very long. They will be back here because they like sewing mail bags in silence'. We have far too many in our prisons who prison is not doing any good. Our re-conviction rate for prisons, borstals, and detention centres is about the same; 70 per cent. will be re-convicted within two years. However you dispose of them you could hardly have a worse result than that. On the face of it, the prison policy of the Home Secretary, if I understand it, is that if there are any extra resources available it is all going on prison building.

There is nothing personal in this. I have the highest regard for my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. As my noble friend Lord Longford said, he is a brave man in war and peace. I know a bit about Northern Ireland having been one of three Privy Counsellors to inquire into interrogation methods there, and later as chairman of the Government committee to overhaul security laws in Northern Ireland. I thought he was a most admirable Secretary of State in relation to Northern Ireland. But on the face of it, this has nothing to do with Home Office organisation. I am sure my right honourable friend would be the first to say that this was entirely his decision, that he is responsible, as a Minister, and that this is a matter he had to decide.

I also feel, with great respect to my noble friend Lord Longford, that I do not see what putting Lord Harris in the Cabinet would really do. After all, if he had been in the Cabinet all this time, what would have been the result? The present Cabinet is 24; I can quite understand that with a 12-12 division it would be useful for the Home Secretary to have a casting vote, but on the face of it this has nothing to do with Home Office organisation.

The Earl of LONGFORD

The noble and learned Lord has missed the point of my argument, my Lords, no doubt because I did not put it clearly enough. I am saying that the Home Secretary is too busy to consider these grave questions. Where the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, and I and so many others agree on these grave matters of the right distribution of resources is that the present Home Secretary, responsible for law and order in the midst of strikes and the rest of it, has no time to give to that sort of problem, and therefore if the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, had been in the Cabinet he would have been able to tackle them. However, if Lord Gardiner did not understand that point, I do not suppose anybody else has because he is the most acute mind here and therefore I feel rather depressed.

Lord GARDINER

My Lords, I am not going to oppose Lord Harris, or anybody who takes his place, or the noble Lord, Lord Boston of Faversham, whom I am equally delighted to see here. I remember going to Faversham to try to get the voters there to vote for him and I am delighted to see him in his present position. Certainly, I have no objection to his being in the Cabinet; I just cannot see how it would cure the problem.

When one considers whether this has anything to do with the organisation of the Home Office, I have to wonder. I shall be corrected by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, in what I am about to say because I have access only to public works of record, but, as I understand it, the organisation of the Home Office is this. The chief civil servant is of course the Permanent Under-Secretary of State and underneath him there are three deputy Under-Secretaries of State, and although I say "one, two and three", they are all on the same plane; it does not mean that one is the head of two and so on. They are in charge of the three main departments—one, prisons; two, police; and three, establishment. Then, on a lower plane, underneath them, the three Deputy Under-Secretaries, there are 10 Assistant Under-Secretaries, and they are in charge of the following departments: one, the general department, as it is called; two, broadcasting; three, criminal policy; four, fire; five, community programme and equal opportunities; six, criminal justice; seven, radio regulation; eight, immigration and nationality; nine, statistical departments, and ten, probation and after-care.

If that is so, Ministers must depend to some extent on advice, and all the advice of the powerful committees, particularly the powerful Prison Department Committee, is obviously of a superior standing than probation and after-care, which is the only department which represents the view of alternatives to imprisonment.

Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE

My Lords, I am not up to date with the organisation of the Home Office, but I do not think the noble and learned Lord has it quite right. I can remember when I was the sole Deputy Under-Secretary of State in the Home Office some years ago, but in accordance with general practice numbers have expanded and I think one would find that all the different parts of the Home Office, including probation and criminal justice, are represented by the Deputy Secretary level.

Lord GARDINER

I can only take it, my Lords, from the current edition of Dod's Parliamentary Companion, which purports to set out the principal officers of the Home Office. No doubt my noble friends Lord Harris of Greenwich and Lord Boston of Faversham will correct me if I am wrong.

It seems to me extraordinary that, as I understand it, it is still deliberate policy that any additional money available is going to the building of more and more prisons at a capital cost of between £2,000 and £4,000 per place, let alone the running costs. This is extending into the 1980s, in circumstances in which it is doubtful whether there will be the prison officers to staff these prisons if they are built. That seems to me extraordinary when one bears in mind that today it costs over £100 a week to keep a girl in a borstal. This seems a tremendous financial cost when compared with the alternatives, which of course do not cost nothing because, first of all, we should have to have more probation officers.

This matter has been considered by, among others, the Commons Expenditure Committee, and evidence has been provided by the Home Office and all kinds of bodies. They have done formidable work on this. They have characterised the alternatives, very much as the Howard League and other bodies have done: (1) Probation, (2) Intensive probation, (3) Day training centres, (4) Day centres, (5) Supported works schemes and sheltered workshops, (6) Intermediate treatment for children and young persons, (7) Community service orders, (8) Senior attendance centres, and (9) Bail hostels. The Howard League has similarly spoken about more day centres, hostels, crisis centres, community service, and so on, and has said Their results are no worse, and often better, and most are much less costly", but they would obviously require a quite considerable expansion in the Probation Service.

If this is the last word of the Home Office on how any additional resources are to be spent, I find it difficult to believe that at least one of the reasons for this is wholly divorced from the fact that the body in the Home Office which deals with prisons is so much more powerful than that body in the Home Office which is responsible for probation and after-care.

What, in the general reorganisation of the Home Office should be done, is again entirely a matter of opinion. I do not like the word "bureaucratisation", but everything seems to have to go to headquarters. Governors have less responsibility than they used to have. I would support, as the Expenditure Committee of the other place has done very strongly, a strengthening of the powers of the inspectorate of prisons and the proposal that they should report direct to the Home Secretary. As in so many fields, everything seems to have gone more and more to head office. I suppose that the nationalisation of the prisons was inevitable, but they have lost their local contacts. I agree with my noble friend in thinking that more power ought to evolve to the regions and to prison governors.

I remember the shock I received when, after great difficulty, I obtained a vast collection of the standing orders and circular instructions issued by the Home Office to prison officers. The first thing that was obvious was that an enormous number of civil servants must spend all their time thinking out new standing orders and circular instructions for officers. The quantity of the papers was so enormous that I could not understand how any prison officer could possibly remember what was contained in them.

Take the situation regarding letters. I do not believe that any censorship of outgoing letters, except perhaps from category A prisoners, is necessary at all. Of course incoming mail must be censored in case of contraband. There is no censorship now in C prisons, and nothing awful has followed that change, but look at the time that prison officers have to take reading prisoners' letters and having to decide, "Is he to be allowed to say that in this letter to so-and-so".

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, if I may interrupt my noble and learned friend, he is making an extremely interesting speech, but could I put this particular point to him on censorship? The only reason why censorship continues at Category C prisons is because the staff associations have refused to agree to an abolition of censorship in those prisons. That is entirely the reason. It has nothing to do with the Home Office officials and Ministers, who wish to abolish it.

Lord GARDINER

My Lords, that again shows an unhappy state of relationship, I should have thought, between the Home Office and the prison staff. One of the things that the Howard League, at least, has wanted to see for very many years is an improvement in the position of the prison staff themselves and, in particular, in their being taken into consultation when the Home Office are formulating policy which affects them. I understand that there is really no consultation all through the Home Office. There is with prison governors, but there is no consultation with prison officers at all when policy is being formed.

My Lords, what is supposed to happen to the letters is this. If there is a dispute with the prison officer as to whether or not the man is to be allowed to say something in a letter, in theory the governor decides. But nowadays everything seems to have to go to head office. I am told by somebody I believe—I am open to be contradicted—that there are, in London, buildings in which there are 300 Home Office civil servants doing nothing at all, every day, every week, every month, but deciding: Is this prisoner to be allowed to say this in this letter to so-and-so? We now have five cases admitted by the European Court which are under consideration, and these all relate to prisoners' letters. There is too high a degree of centralisation.

What, in these circumstances, is to be done? The Howard League is, I think, in favour of a commission for penal affairs, whatever one might like to call it. They say that both custodial and noncustodial services should be co-ordinated within a joint commission for the treatment of offenders or, if the word "treatment" is regarded as outmoded, joint commission for the penal system. They point out that a first, small step towards that would be the publication of joint reports on both prisons and after-care; and that consideration should also be given to bringing together the services to victims, such as official liaison with victims' support schemes, and crime prevention in the wide sense, involving community crime prevention and not merely security practices. This joint commission would not only run the penal system, but would explain its work to the public. That would not be wholly outside the Home Office, but it would mean that the same body would be considering both prison and alternatives to imprisonment.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, would like in a sense, I think, to see something which went further and also brought in to some extent the judiciary and those who decide who are to go to prison, the police and everybody affected by this system. My Lords, I do not know whether or not this was engineered by my noble friend Lord Longford, but this morning I went to Whitehall Place and I obtained from the Liberal Party the only remaining copy of their evidence to the Prison Inquiry. I think some photostats have since been made. They carry a good deal further, I think, what both my noble friend Lord Longford and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, have said. They think that prisons ought to be taken away entirely from the Home Office. This is now the official policy of the Liberal Party. I do not know whether we are to hear a speaker from the Liberal Party, but I regret very much that we have not heard from them so far.

This may to some extent appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I do not know whether the Liberal Party and Sir Robert Mark have been getting together, but what they say is this: The present illogical system which separates the policies that determine the number of prisoners and the periods of their imprisonment from those concerned with their housing and treatment must be ended. Responsibility for the Prison Service should be taken away from the Home Office and the prison department should form part of a new organisational structure which—

1. (i) Allows the work of the courts (i.e., the Lord Chancellor's office) and the prison service to be closely integrated.
2. (ii) Provides a career service with opportunities for those working in prisons to reach the highest levels.
3. (iii) Is capable of laying down clear objectives for the Prison Service, whilst permitting maximum flexibility in the treatment of offenders in each prison.
4. (iv) Encourages full cooperation including interchange of staff, between those concerned with trial, treatment and aftercare of offenders.

There are several ways in which these objectives could be achieved including an independent Prison Commission and a new organisation covering prosecution, sentencing policy, the Courts, treatment of offenders, the Probation Service and aftercare. Such reorganisation however raises the question of the future role and structure of the Home Office and ministerial responsibility for trial, treatment and aftercare of offenders. In view of this we recommend an urgent enquiry into this matter". My Lords, I am far from saying that any of these bodies, or, certainly I personally, have the perfect solution. I feel that there ought to be at least one body which is responsible and can look at both prison treatment, on the one side, and treatment outside prison, on the other side, with an even hand so that their resources will receive more equal treatment. Whether we should go further than that I do not know. I was unaware of these views of the Liberal Party—as I think anybody was—until this morning, but I am sure your Lordships will agree that at least this debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Longford has given us a lot to think about.

9.37 p.m.

Viscount ULLSWATER

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for introducing this Question for debate today. It is a great honour to follow so closely such eminent speakers whose knowledge and experience is so great and so broad. I want to deal more with the policy of the Home Office rather than its reorganisation, because my interest lies mainly with the young adult offenders aged between 17 and 21. To begin with, I should like to point to one or two reasons why these young people end up in custody. It always concerns me to read the statistics of how many young people finish school without qualifications, without being able even to read or write. Because of high labour costs, industry and commerce are unwilling to provide enough opportunities for the below-average-intelligence school-leaver to find employment, although the Government have now created the very useful Youth Employment Service. Having too much leisure and too little money when unemployed is more difficult to cope with than having too much work.

Modern society is very complicated and life in that society is tough for all—and tougher for those who are inadequately prepared for that life. We have to accept that we do not have unlimited freedom. From an early age we have to learn the disciplines imposed on us by the society in which we find ourselves. The young of all generations tend to push at the extremities of tolerance and in doing so sometimes persuade society to shift its position. However, the mere fact that we are a civilised society imposes limits on all our behaviour beyond which it is unacceptable to go.

Some of the crimes that young offenders commit and that bring them into serious trouble and so into custodial sentences include muggings, assaults and arson. This shows a lack of concern for other people; and some of the muggings of old people for quite paltry sums demonstrate clearly to me that we have failed to teach in our schools and homes any form of respect for our fellow human beings. High rise flats and large tenement buildings breed a callousness that is evident to all and not easily overcome; and, more often than not, the fruststrations of the young inhabitants overflow into violence and anti-social behaviour, sometimes encouraged by the uninhibiting influence of alcohol.

Almost more important is the pitiful lack of self-respect that we witness among the drug users and abusers. To lose one's self-respect is a dire misfortune, and to see so many young people with no respect for themselves or others is a sad reflection on the standard of our society. Before we can hope to see the end of juvenile crime, we shall have to find a cure for the mistakes that we are making collectively in bringing up our children and preparing them for the life that they will be leading as adults. Bearing these things in mind, I want to move on to the ways in which we now deal with young offenders and to how perhaps we should deal with them in the future.

At present there are three sentences available to the courts for offenders aged between 17 and 21: detention centre, borstal and imprisonment. The distinctions between the three have exercised the minds of the courts considerably, and I believe the differences that were originally conceived for the three sentences have now become somewhat blurred and this has added to the difficulties of the Home Office in the need to allocate places in different parts of the country to satisfy the local needs of the courts. The sentences have to be specific when they are handed down by the courts and there is always a chance that not all the options are available to any one area at any one time because of the limited places at each establishment.

The Green Paper, Youth Custody and Supervision, A New Sentence, published in December, 1978, points the way to a much more satisfactory solution, whereby the existing sentences of detention, borstal training and imprisonment would be replaced by a single custodial sentence. Magistrates would still retain the power to sentence offenders up to a limit of six months as at present, and the Crown Court would have the power to sentence for a longer period. I believe that every alternative form of disposal should be considered before a custodial sentence, but if it is felt that there is no alternative to a period of custody then custody it should be.

It may be useful in some very exceptional circumstances to suspend this sentence, but, more often than not, in those circumstances the offender—and remember I am talking about the young offender—is seen by his mates to be walking out of the court scot-free. How much more sensible it would be to have the power under Section 47 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 (which is not yet in operation) to suspend part of a custodial sentence—something which I note with regret is not recommended by the Green Paper. Detention sentences were originally conceived to give a short, sharp shock and were like the treatment one might expect during basic training in the Army. As a soldier, however, one emerged from the training, battered and bruised maybe, but with a sense of achievement and pride in oneself at having overcome the obstacles placed before one, and one gains the respect of one's fellows in the unit. Although it may be that to survive such a detention sentence may give the offender a sense of pride in achievement, I think it should not rate any esteem in the eyes of his fellows and certainly should be nothing to boast about.

It must be a very harsh sound for the prisoner to hear as the prison gates clang behind him. The deprivation of liberty and inability to make contact with home or family must have a nerve racking effect on most human beings. However, man has shown that he is very adaptable and can tolerate the most extreme pressures, and so will a prisoner learn to cope with his new environment. He may not like it but he will live with it until his release, and will prepare himself for that stay, however long. Once this has happened, the effectiveness of the punishment as a deterrent ceases and society's retribution remains. With a part-suspended sentence, the offender suffers the nerve-racking part and the deterrent effect, and on his early release knows that if he offends again he will be sending himself back into custody.

Lastly, I would urge the Home Office to adopt custodial régimes which involve attendance in community work outside their establishments, as well as the utmost self-sufficiency inside. These two measures would rectify in some degree the two main causes that have led the offenders to their present positions—a lack of respect for other people and a lack of respect for themselves. There are, sadly, many disadvantaged people in our community, from the handicapped child to the mental patient and the elderly; but the young offenders would soon find, working with these people, an increase in their social awareness and their respect for others. Learning how to cope with day-to-day life and providing for themselves, that self-sufficiency in the establishment will return to them the self-respect they need and have so often lost. Let us do our best to create a structure of community existence that reduces the temptation to commit evil deeds and to teach our children, in a manner that they want to learn, the limits of acceptable behaviour, and so relieve us of the sad necessity of putting young men and women behind bars.

9.47 p.m.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, may I begin with an apology to your Lordships and particularly to my noble friend Lord Longford, for not having been here at the beginning of the debate. I can produce no convincing explanation for my absence, other than the fact that I assumed that those speaking in favour of shorter speeches would make rather longer speeches than in fact they did. I am particularly sorry because I wanted to follow as closely as possible—and certainly I shall do that as far as Hansard is concerned—the analysis of my noble friend, who I know has devoted an enormous amount of time and enthusiasm to this question. Also, of course, I wanted to hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, with his very substantial experience as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office. However, I think I can judge without a great deal of difficulty the general line of my noble friend's speech today, which follows very closely on that which he has argued in this House on previous occasions; and I should like to deal with some of the issues which I knew, because of a conversation we had, he was going to raise and also to deal with several other points which have emerged in this debate so far. I am doing this on what is probably the last occasion for perhaps three years when I shall be entitled to make a speech touching on this particular area, given the fact that on 1st March I become Chairman of the Parole Board and then for at least three years after that I shall not be able to address your Lordships on these particular issues.

Let me say at the outset that I should like to deal with two points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and also with an argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. If I may deal first with the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on two specific questions, he first raised the matter of whether it was not desirable to have far closer contact between the Police Service and the Probation Service—a point which, if I may say so, I very strongly agreed with. For the five years I was at the Home Office I was responsible for both, and I certainly share his view that it is highly desirable to ensure that there are close day-to-day contacts between the members of those two Services. I was therefore particularly glad to have the opportunity, at a conference at Ditchley Park last March called by the Home Office for a number of chief officers of police, to preside at a meeting which took place on that occasion when there were representatives of the social services and education departments of the two large local authorities and also two representatives of the Probation Service.

As a result of that meeting, a Home Office circular in the names of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Social Services went out in, I think, December, saying that meetings should take place within six months, bringing together chief officers of police, chief probation officers, directors of education and directors of social services. Maybe it is very obvious that such meetings should already have taken place, and perhaps in many areas it is arguable that they have taken place. But, for the first time, it has been suggested formally by the Government that chief officers of police, who would be the people calling together these conferences, should take the initiative. I believe that this is an extremely important initiative, and I hope very much that it proves to be successful.

If I may say so, I dissent on one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on the question of the establishment of the Dorset police. He will forgive me for dealing with this matter, but for two reasons I know a fair amount about it. First my parents happen to live in Dorset, and I worked there for a fairly substantial period of my life, so that to some extent I regard it as a home police force. Secondly, I took the decision, so far as the establishment of the Dorset police was concerned. The noble Lord asked: if the police were given 100 extra men—it was, in fact, a figure more modest than 100, though I cannot remember off-hand what it was—why should not the Probation Service get a significant increase as well? That appears a very logical argument, save for one thing. If we are to approach matters in precisely that way, then, as I am sure the noble Lord will on reflection agree, one is faced with a rather tiresome problem as regards the situation in the Metro politan Police area. There has been no variation in the establishment of the Metropolitan Police for around 50 years. But in that period—

Lord INGLEWOOD

My Lords, when the noble Lord quotes that figure, ought he not also to mention the very large increase in the number of civilians employed?

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

Of course, my Lords. It was a Question which the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, put down and I remember it very clearly. But even making allowance for that, and calculating the growth of crime in London in the last 50 years, it demonstrates a number of rather significant points. All I am saying is that if that had been the attitude of the Home Office, one would not have had the very substantial growth in the Probation Service in London, which has multiplied several times over within that period. Therefore, I do not think it is possible to look at police and probation establishments as though they were largely the same thing, because they are not. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, of whose interest in the Probation Service I am well aware, I do not think it is true that the Probation Service has been badly treated in the last five, six or seven years. So far as the establishment is concerned—and I had direct ministerial responsibility for five years—the Probation Service has been very reasonably treated by the Government.

Lord GARDINER

My Lords, I reflect on the evidence of the Home Office given to the Committee on Expenditure. I thought they said that there had been an absolute freeze on the Probation Service since 1974.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord will examine what I have said, he will see that there was not. There has been a significant growth since 1974. I do not have the papers in front of me, but certainly there was quite a significant growth during the period of my office as Minister of State, responsible for the Probation Service, and further growth is already planned, which will take place after 1st April, which is approaching, in the next financial year.

That deals with two points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and I come now to the point to which I wish to address myself raised by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, who put one or two questions concerning the Police Service. I do not think it is at all right to say—though I understand the motivation of the noble Lord, who takes a very close interest in these matters—that inspectors of constabulary are members of an old boys' club who do not go in for rigorous inspection of the police organisations within the areas for which they are responsible. As the noble Lord rightly said, all the inspectors of constabulary are former chief officers of police, with two exceptions. One is the present Chief Inspector of Constabulary, who was formerly a Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and the other is the Inspector for Wales and the South-West, who is a former Deputy Assistant Com- missioner of the Metropolitan Police. However, it is perfectly true, as the noble Lord says, that the others are former chief officers of police.

I am not quite clear, however, how one could get an inspector of constabulary to be taken seriously—as he should be, given the responsibilities of that office—if he was not a former senior police officer. They have to be senior police officers if they are to be taken seriously by their peers. That is absolutely inescapable. Although the report upon the very unhappy situation which arose in Lancashire was not written for us by an Inspector of Constabulary, it was written by a brother chief officer—by the then Chief Constable of Hampshire, Sir Douglas Osmond. Having read that report, I must say that it was a report of considerable integrity, of the kind that one would associate with Sir Douglas Osmond.

Lord INGLEWOOD

My Lords, I made no comments at all about the report on the late Chief Constable of Lancashire. When I said something about the old-boy network, I was not assuming that it was inefficient in any way but simply that it did not have behind it the power that it ought to have. However, as the noble Lord has referred to Lancashire in this way, it is true to say that the Lancashire force was inspected a number of times over the years before that detective sergeant made his complaint. And nothing happened.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, about two months ago the noble Lord and I had a fascinating debate on this question. I think that it would be a mistake for me to go over that ground again, except to say that I do not accept that what the noble Lord has said totally accurately summarises the case that I then attempted to put before your Lordships' House.

Having dealt at the outset with those two particular questions, may I come to the substance of what I should like to say to the House today. I agree at the outset with a great deal of what I am sure my noble friend Lord Longford said—in my absence, I am afraid—and with what was said in my presence by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner about the need to limit the size of the prison population. It is an easy thing to say, but no Government have any power to control the size of the prison population; they have to receive into custody those who are awarded custodial sentences by the courts.

In the final analysis, therefore, the first way in which a Home Secretary can determine the size of the prison population is by creating a series of non-custodial alternatives—by creating bail hostels and so on. This has been done to a significant degree—and rather more than was suggested by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner. The only other way in which the Home Secretary can deal with this matter is by coming before Parliament and making specific recommendations that certain offences, which at the moment are imprisonable, should be non-imprisonable. I shall come to a particular example of where a change is arguably desirable. I believe that, if Parliament really wishes to take this matter seriously, it is to this area that it must apply its energies in the future.

Let me illustrate the kind of problem that arises at the Home Office. I am particularly glad to be making this speech in the presence of my noble friend Lord Boston of Faversham who has succeeded me at the Home Office. I am no doubt covering some of the ground which he would otherwise be covering, but he and I have had the opportunity to work together, just as my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner had the opportunity to go down to Faversham at the time that my noble friend the Minister of State was a Labour candidate in the by-election. I am glad to say that the result was extremely satisfactory, as I am sure his speech today will be. I extend to my noble friend my very sincere good wishes. It goes without saying that anything which one can do in the future to make his task in this House more easy one will do, given the fact that we devote a great deal of attention to matters of this kind.

May I now come to one particular question about bail, to try to demonstrate the kind of problem with which Home Office Ministers are confronted. It is, of course, easy to say—and, indeed, it is argued by many—that there are far too many remands in custody. There has been a fairly significant reduction in the number of remands in custody. Certainly that is very fortunate because conditions, at both Brixton and Pentonville, which are the remand prisons of London, are so intolerable at the moment that were there not to have been a reduction in the number of people remanded in custody there would have been the creation of an exceedingly serious situation in both prisons. Having said that, I must say that there is often a great deal of public anxiety, and often anxiety expressed by senior officers of police, about the consequences of courts allowing people bail.

I am a strong supporter of the Bail Act. I supported it in this House. Indeed, it was my duty to do so as I was the Minister in charge of the Bill, but in my view it happened to be the right thing to do. However, it is only fair to acknowledge that one meets operational detectives who give one a list of offences which are committed by people with significant criminal careers in the past but who, notwithstanding that, have been given bail; and they say: "It is all very well for you, Minister, to say that the Bail Act is a good idea, but may we point out the consequences of giving bail to X and Y and Z?" This is a serious matter, and despite the fact that I am a strong supporter of the Bail Act it is only right to acknowledge that there is often significant anxiety, so far as both the police and also a wider public are concerned, about the operation of the bail system. Yet I repeat, were it not for a more liberal attitude towards bail the situation in the remand prisons of London would be even worse than it is already. There is no easy answer to this particular problem but it highlights the need to examine the make-up of Britain's present prison population.

I submit at the outset that there are only a limited number of ways in which we can influence the size of the prison population, but let me be as constructive as I can by giving two examples of what I believe can be done. As I have already indicated, I believe that we must examine much more seriously than we have in the past the question of making some offences nonimprisonable. The most obvious and to some extent the easiest example is the question of how to deal with the prostitute. I do not pretend to know how many women convicted of this offence are at the moment in prison, but I suspect that the number is significantly over 100. This is a fairly high proportion of the total number of women in custody, which is somewhere in the region of 1,400.

I am well aware of all the arguments that we have had on this issue in the past, but I believe that we shall have to look at this matter far more carefully in the future. Women's prisons are even more overcrowded than men's prisons and, with my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, I had to take the sombre decision of deciding that a new establishment just outside the Rochester borstal, which was going to be for young men between the ages of 17 and 21—I am sure my noble friend Lord Boston of Faversham will know the place because it is close to his former constituency—was in fact not going to be used for young men between the ages of 17 and 21, who were going to be kept still in most unsatisfactory conditions at Canterbury and various other establishments, but was going to have to be made over for women offenders, simply because of the pressures of the women's prison population. Therefore, I think there will have to be a re-examination of this particular matter.

I recognise that even if courts no longer have the power to sentence these women to prison, some of them will end up there because of their refusal to pay fines. Nevertheless, I believe this is one area where we must adopt a bolder policy than we have sometimes followed in the past, not of decriminalising this offence, because I do not think that would be possible, but certainly giving the courts the power only to award perhaps a very substantial fine indeed, and arguably a greater fine than at the moment the courts have the power to inflict on women who are convicted of soliciting.

Secondly, I want to raise the question of the inadequates, the social inadequates, who are imprisoned: I particularly want to raise the matter with my noble friend Lord Boston. I went to Pentonville Prison perhaps a year and half ago, and I was deeply disturbed to see the number of people who were clearly social inadequates, people simply going in and cut of prison the whole time. The governor said to me—and I think I reported it to the House at the time—that some of these people came in and out so often that it was impossible to know whether a particular man had been out before the governor saw him on the next occasion. As a result of that we decided to put in hand some research to try to work out with some degree of precision how many people with these recidivist qualities there were in the prison population at that time. As a result, when I gave evidence to the Public Expenditure Select Committee in another place last Summer I gave them to understand that the results of this research would be made available to Parliament within the next 12 months. I should be grateful if my noble friend Lord Boston could confirm that the Home Office can in fact implement that particular target date.

My Lords, I wanted to come on to only one other question in this debate, and that is the undercurrent which has been visible to me from all the speeches that have been made on the question of the organisation of the Home Office Prison Department and whether some totally different system would be an improvement on the existing situation. Let me begin by saying that I start off with one very clear prejudice. I do not, I fear, agree with my noble friend, even when he is so beguiling as to suggest that I should join the Cabinet, that there should be more Ministers. Indeed, if I may say so, expressing an extremely heretical opinion, I believe that there should be fewer Ministers.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, I was not saying that there should be more Ministers, but I was suggesting that there should be more strongly placed Ministers.

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, that again is an attractive idea from my noble friend, but I am making this point in a week when we have heard, or seen in the papers this morning, a recommendation of a committee saying that there should be a Minister responsible for marriage. I know my noble friend Lord Brockway is in favour of a Minister for disarmament. All I am saying to my noble friend, indeed to the whole House, is that I believe that Governments in the last 10 years, not simply the present Government but Governments for a significant period of time, have had far too many Ministers. I do not include the Home Office, the House will not be astonished to hear me say, in this censure; but I must say that when one looks at the establishment of Ministers in some other Departments it raises the question in one's mind whether they are being operated on as cost-effective a basis as they properly should be.

I doubt, for some of the reasons given by my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, whether reorganisation of the kind suggested by my noble friend Lord Longford would necessarily achieve the objective that my noble friend has in mind. Let me just instance this by replying to one particular point raised by my noble and learned friend, Lord Gardiner. I do not believe it is true that the Home Office has given such high priority to prison building at the expense of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment. That simply is not true. With great respect to my noble and learned friend, he did slightly, if I may say so, understate the number of Home Office Deputy Under-Secretaries; no doubt it is a mistake made in Dod's. I would assure him that there is certainly a Deputy Under-Secretary of State responsible for the Probation Service. Indeed when I had meetings on these particular questions within my Department I had a Deputy Under-Secretary who was in charge of the Prison Department and also a Deputy Under-Secretary of State who had a responsibility including that of the Probation Service. So, certainly so far as the structure of the Home Office is concerned, there is simply no truth in the suggestion that those within the Department who are responsible for non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment are under-represented at a decision-making level. I doubt whether a further Minister or even a Minister with greater powers is, in fact, what is necessary.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, I hope that before the debate ends the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, or perhaps the Minister, will reply to the governors' criticism that there is a deplorable lack of leadership in the Home Office. Spokesmen for the Home Office are too much inclined to ignore that. Can the noble Lord say anything about it?

Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH

My Lords, there is a deep temptation to make a speech as though one were speaking from the Front Bench, but, with great respect, I am not speaking from the Front Bench. However, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Boston of Faversham can be relied upon to deal with those particular questions. I would only say that if prison governors have taken that view I am sure that my noble friend will deal with the matter. I do not believe that by creating some totally different apparatus or structure the situation will improve as radically as is believed. I do not believe that the recreation of something like the Prison Commission would be in any way a sensible idea. I say that as one who was rather in sympathy with the attitude of my Party when we opposed the proposal of the Party opposite to abolish the Prison Commission. It was a decision taken by the Party opposite when it was in office before the 1964 General Election. I thought at that time that it was a mistake. Everything that I have seen since has persuaded me that the Party opposite were right to abolish the Prison Commission. I do not believe that it would in any way be a sensible idea to start creating it all over again.

Having addressed the House for as long as I have, I do not want to go into the very detailed arguments within the Home Office as to why this simply does not make sense. However, I can assure my noble friend that there is no way in which one can insulate the Prison Department from all the other policy-making departments within the Home Office. I would point out to him that my opportunity of studying this matter goes back to 1966 and 1967 when I was special assistant to the then Home Secretary, Mr. Jenkins, who came into office fairly soon after the Prison Commission had been abolished. I must say to the House quite bluntly that some of the problems with which we were confronted at that time were created because of the existence of that separate Prison Commission. Some of the most serious problems faced by the then Home Secretary were entirely due to that factor.

Therefore, I must say to my noble friend that, although I understand that there is a strong current of opinion among governors and others who look back to these, what they regard as, golden days, when there was a separate Prison Commission, I believe that cold analysis of what in reality happened at that time does not, in fact, in any way justify that belief.

10.14 p.m.

Baroness MASHAM of ILTON

My Lords, I should like to add my congratulations to the Minister for his elevation to the Front Bench and also to thank the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for raising this debate. My experience with penal matters has been as a member of the board of visitors of a borstal; helping with summer camps for borstal boys and undergraduates from Oxford; and from being connected with NACRO—the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders. For about 18 years I have met hundreds of young men, some of them still only boys. All of them have problems. Most of them come from disturbed and often deprived families, and the majority have some degree of damaged personality.

This year is the International Year of the Child. The Home Office has let it be known that it intends to reorganise the young offender establishments, doing away with detention centres and having one type of establishment run on borstal lines. I think that a very close look ought to be taken at what those institutions will do in the future. Are they to train and try to rehabilitate these young people, both males and females? Very many of these young people are the most at risk parents of the future. We hear so much about child abuse these days; we hear about the cycle of deprivation and how those who batter or abuse their children have very often had disturbed and battered childhoods themselves; they have not had good parents to set an example, and many of them just do not know how to bring up children.

Having spoken to paediatricians working in the field of child abuse, I know that these parents are nearly always emotionally deprived and immature. They are often socially isolated and cut off from their families, in financial difficulties and mostly living in bad housing. Very many of the inmates of our young offender establishments will have all those problems before them when they become parents.

When these young people are collected together in an institution, is it not an opportunity at least to try to teach them how to be good parents, how to look after children and that it is important for their wives or girl friends to attend antenatal clinics when pregnant? This training could be given with well-organised classes as part of their education programme. I have talked with boys who are themselves worried about what they may do to their families. A few weeks ago one young man in borstal told me that whenever his young child cried he wanted to shake it. The parents must learn the basics, that babies do cry when they are cold, hungry or want something. Paediatricians see the terrible results of child abuse. I know that they would be willing to help organise such classes. Having had borstal lads in my home when our children were babies, I know how well they respond, and very many of them would enjoy and benefit from training for parenthood.

There are just a few general points which I should like to mention. Being connected with both the Prison Service and the Health Service, I believe that sadly there seems to be a need for more secure units with specialised treatment and a high staff ratio. No doubt that unhappy fact reflects our confused society. The existing institutions trying to cope with these very difficult young people, with inadequate facilities and under-staffing, find that they are being disrupted. At present, many borstals do not have adequate psychiatric support. Would it not be practical if these secure units were joint-funded and staffed? It seems that with such a huge Department as the Home Office, it might be of benefit to the Prison Department if it had its own department linked by the Home Secretary at its head. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, is not in agreement with this, and I am not a Liberal, but many people working within the Prison Service feel this way. After all, the Prison Department caters for about 42,000 prisoners of all sorts of categories and it employs over 20,000 people.

I should like to ask the Minister a question, and if he does not know the answer tonight perhaps he would write to me. Are governor grades of staff represented on the Prison Department's Whitley Council? If not, should not all grades be represented? I conclude by expressing the hope that when the young offender establishments are reorganised, it will not be a herding together process, but that the individual needs and problems will be assessed and treated. The problems are very complex. There are many pathetic inadequates, and there are many tough guys who should not have their image reinforced. I am a believer that violence breeds violence. Perhaps the deterrent for crime should exist outside the institutions. Without an adequate, contented, well-trained staff who have energy and enthusiasm and who care, good morale and hope for improvements in the future of our young penal establishments will not succeed.

10.20 p.m.

Baroness ELLES

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the moving speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. This debate has been in the great traditions of this House. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, has put down an important probing Question, and we have had a combination of what one might call the collective wisdom of your Lordships dealing with many aspects of this vital problem. As so often happens in this House, nobody has agreed with the proposals of the noble Earl, but nevertheless I think he could end this debate being very happy with the extraordinarily helpful and constructive contributions that have been made by noble Lords on the subject that he has enabled us to debate this evening. I am sure that the noble Lord the Minister will find as his first homework that he will be kept busy for many weeks. We from these Benches wish him well both tonight and in the hopefully few weeks which he will have in which to complete his homework as a result of this debate.

The proposal that the noble Earl has made, of having a Minister for Penal Affairs, of possibly Cabinet rank, immediately raises the hackles of anybody who has any pretentions at all to being a student of constitutional affairs. I have always believed that the Government are responsible to the whole of the electorate for their wellbeing and security. Therefore, I should not have thought that it would be justifiable to have one Minister of Cabinet rank, one out of 24 or 25, solely concerned with penal matters. Clearly these are serious problems and they affect society, but the philosophical approach of the noble Earl would surely lead to the logical conclusion that we would also have a Minister for Unemployment, a Minister for Ill Health and Social Insecurity, and one could go on right through the gamut of Cabinet offices each with their alternative responsibilities for the tragic consequences of the work that they are meant to be doing for this country.

It would certainly seem to me that whoever is responsible in Government for the maintenance of law and order within the United Kingdom must also, by the nature of his responsibility and the authority which lies within this responsibility at his command, be responsible for the politics relating to those who break the law, and who in fact cause breaches of the peace within the community. I cannot think that it would be right that the Home Secretary's powers should be split in the way that the noble Earl proposes.

I recognise the validity of many of the remarks that the noble Earl made, and I am sure everybody in this House would agree that no one knows better than he, with his long record of compassion and concern for those who have received prison sentences, and that one should take with the greatest of seriousness the comments that he has made. But I believe also that any new Ministry that he is proposing would in fact merely create a further bureaucratic machine, with all the waste of public money and manpower that that would entail.

Also, there would be no absolute guarantee of having any other Minister who would be more capable of remedying many of the problems to which the noble Earl referred. I do not think it is a question of a new machine: it may be a question of a new approach; it may indeed be a question of a new Minister. I say this in no way as a personal attack on the present Home Secretary. I do not think that that kind of remark is helpful. I am merely speaking in general terms. I would say the same of the Civil Service. After all, civil servants have to do the job they are told to do, and I do not think it is helpful in any way to attack any particular branch of the Civil Service who, I would say, give remarkable service to the community.

But the organisation of the Prison Service, which is the main subject this evening, is of course being reviewed by the May Committee, as many noble Lords have already mentioned. This is a committee which we on this side of the House, and indeed in another place my right honourable friend Mr. Whitelaw, welcomed. We look forward to hearing the conclusions and recommendations of that committee. Subject to those findings, I understand that when we are in Government we shall—it is only natural that we should—have a look at the prison governors and the staff structure in relation to the administration by the Home Office, but it would be irrelevant to pretend what the answer might be, and in any case I do not think any comments would be helpful until the May Committee has reported.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, surely this is an excellent moment, if one has something to say, to say it. I am giving evidence to the May Committee, but why not say it publicly? The May Committee is not a very strong committee; it has one or two people with a long interest in prison matters, but some of them are completely ignorant of such matters, and I suggest that we could help them a lot.

Baroness ELLES

My Lords, I am sure that in the generality of matters individuals should give evidence to the May Committee, but it would be foolish of me from this Box to commit a Party which might be in Government in a few weeks as to the kind of policies they might follow. I do not think that would be the right approach to take at this juncture. Undoubtedly individuals in my Party are well aware of the difficulties and may wish to give evidence, but that is an individual matter and not a Party matter at this juncture.

In any case, there are certain aspects of the problems which the noble Earl and other noble Lords have raised, particularly in regard to sentencing and accommodation for prisoners, which must affect the working conditions and morale of the prison staff and where I believe some action could be taken within the existing legal and administrative provisions without any reorganisation. I think far too much emphasis has been placed on the idea of reorganisation without looking at what the problems are and how they can be dealt with within existing circumstances. I would even add that they do not all involve extra financial resources. The noble and learned Lord rather stressed the need for additional resources, but certain matters could, I believe, be put right even without any further public expenditure.

We need only look at the very good example of Golda v.the United Kingdom, which took six years from the time of application to the European Commission to the time when a remedy was ordered by the European Court in Strasbourg and when the necessary changes were eventually made to the prison rules; in fact, I do not think they were made until 1976. That was nothing to do with reorganisation; it was a question of dealing with what was clearly a defect in the way the prison rules had been drawn up. That is not to apportion blame to any particular person. Nevertheless, here was a clear case of somebody who was being denied human rights, who was not able even to write to his MP, if I have understood the case—I have not read it right through, but that was one of the grounds for complaint. It seems extraordinary that it should have taken six years until some action was taken by a Government Department.

In my view, that has nothing to do with reorganisation. It is something which could be put right with goodwill. The noble Earl referred to the political will to do something, and here was a case which I think could have been remedied. There are many other examples on which I could draw, but I do not intend to delay the House by giving a full list of problems which I believe could be put right without reorganisation.

I have given the Minister notice of the questions I intend to put and I should particularly like an answer to this: what measures have the Government taken to implement the provisions of the Criminal Law Act 1977 relating to partially suspended sentences? My noble friend Lord Ullswater referred to this matter. The Government agreed with the Opposition at the time of introducing an Amendment in another place in 1977 that the introduction of this approach would be a helpful contribution both for the offender and for conditions of accommodation in prisons, but, so far as I am aware, nothing has happened in the last 18 months. May we be told why nothing has been done?

I am given to understand that accommodation in open prisons is at present used only to the extent of about 50 per cent. I also understand that an undertaking is given to the neighbourhoods where open prisons are set up that no one with a record of criminal violence will be sent to an open prison. Surely there must be many cases of prisoners in other than open prisons who have been sentenced for failing to pay fines or maintenance defaulting, or for other similar reasons. They are the kind of people who could perfectly well be placed in an open prison, if they have to be detained in prison at all. I have always believed that a prison sentence is not satisfactory for people who fail to pay fines, and it would relieve the enormous pressure on prison accommodation if they were not so sentenced, but, if this is the law as it stands today—and, after all, we are here to uphold the law—why cannot at least some of these people be placed in open prisons?

Situations arise which, I am sure all noble Lords in the House would agree, are totally shameful. For instance, the issuing of unruly certificates in respect of young offenders means that in the end some of these young offenders are sent to adult prisons. That surely cannot be right by any standards, whatever we may call ourselves, and I feel that we cannot call ourselves even a civilised society if we allow this kind of thing to happen. I quite understand that community homes are allowed to refuse these cases, but surely the Government can find alternative accommodation for them. It cannot possibly benefit any child under the age of 21—and I use the word "child" as a generic term—to be put into an adult prison in the kind of conditions in which prisoners have to live in our country today.

These are the kind of matters I wish to raise, and I am very grateful to the noble Earl for being able to raise them, because I believe that they should be brought to the attention of both this House and the public. Furthermore, they are matters with which the Home Secretary and his Department can surely try to deal more effectively than they have done.

I do not believe that reorganisation of the Home Office would provide ipso facto remedies for these failures to implement existing legal provisions within the existing opportunities, but, like the noble Earl, Lord Longford, all of us in this House with wide experience of social and legal activities over the years would certainly wish to see improvements in the implementation of the law, better protection for the law-abiding citizen and, certainly, the fair treatment of the offender.

10.32 p.m.

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Longford most warmly for his very kind remarks about my new post; these I found immensely encouraging. I also wish to thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Elles and Lady Masham of Ilton, and the other noble Lords who have been kind enough to make similar remarks. I hope that they will forgive me for not mentioning them each by name, at least at this stage in my speech. Their remarks are no less appreciated for that, and I am very grateful indeed. I include in my thanks my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich. I have already had an opportunity to pay tribute to his work, and I would join with other noble Lords tonight in wishing him well in his new post.

I am sure we are all grateful that my noble friend has given us the chance today to have this debate on Home Office organisation in relation to penal matters. His dedicated commitment to the cause of penal reform commands considerable respect and attention, even though we may sometimes differ from him in opinion on the matters in issue. I am all the more sorry, therefore, that in my first encounter with him in your Lordships' House since taking up my new duties, I must begin my Answer to the Question he tabled on, I fear, a rather negative note. I shall have something to say a little later on about the scope of his reference to "penal matters", but as he dwelt mainly on prison questions I want to begin with his proposals for radical change in that area. In doing that, I also wish to thank him for his kindness and courtesy in having given me notice of points which he planned to raise in tonight's debate.

My noble friend first urged the immediate appointment of a Minister for prisons, to be answerable to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, but to have Cabinet rank; indeed, to be a member of the Cabinet—

The Earl of LONGFORD

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend, but perhaps the copy of my notes which I sent him contained a crucial misprint. I emphasised that it was a Minister for penal affairs. That is the essence of it. He would co-ordinate prisons and the Probation Service, for instance. It was not just prisons.

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

My Lords, I am happy to accept my noble friend's further information on that point, and I am sorry for having got it wrong initially. I feel it only right to say straight away that Her Majesty's Government do not think that such an appointment as this is necessary; nor, indeed, would be helpful—in fact, rather the reverse. Doubtless there are many causes, in addition to penal matters, for which there are quite strong cases for representation in Cabinet; and I am sure that strong cases could be made out, and very vigorously sought, both by individual Members of your Lordships' House and, indeed, by Members of another place as well, for a variety of additional Cabinet posts. But we have to recognise that Cabinets have to be of a manageable size if they are to be effective. That would be quite a compelling objection in itself, I would suggest, to my noble friend's proposition, were there not a more direct objection—and I know, too, that other noble Lords who have spoken tonight share in the view which I am putting forward about this, including the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, with his very extensive experience of Home Office matters as Permanent Under-Secretary there, as well as my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner.

In this more direct objection I would refer to the fact that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, by reason of his responsibilities for the law and order services as a whole, is in fact already admirably placed in Cabinet to give, so to speak, strong voice to the interests, both of the Prison Service and, in fact, of penal matters generally. I would suggest that to introduce a subordinate Minister (for that, indeed, is what he would be, though a member of the Cabinet) for penal matters would tend to complicate as well as divide the collective effort against crime which it is, after all, the Government's aim to unify. Perhaps I might interpose this thought in mentioning this particular point. I feel there has clearly been something of a conspiracy in your Lordships' House tonight to keep me out of the Cabinet. I can only make a confession to your Lordships, and it is that that is a conspiracy in which I join completely willingly as a co-conspirator.

The second point which my noble friend made was that he criticised the structure and working methods of the Prison Department, and commended the management, status and style of the Prison Commission.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, may I again interrupt? I am sorry, but I said that one would not expect to reproduce the old Prison Commission exactly, but I asked for a dedicated body with a professional head.

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

My Lords, with his customary expertise my noble friend has in fact anticipated the very next point I was coming to—the reservation which he has in fact himself placed upon his proposal. But the indictment, as I would suggest it is, in fact ranged quite widely. There was, it was suggested, lack of leadership, ineffectual career civil servants, bureaucracy and centralisation. I might also interpose another point here. It is perhaps a comparatively minor one, but nevertheless it was one which my noble friend mentioned in the course of his speech. He said he had never met a prisoner who had met a Home Office official. Here, I am able to provide him with very rapid reassurance. In fact, I myself saw that very thing happening only two days ago, on Monday, when I made the first of what I hope is going to be a series of visits to the Prison Service.

The Earl of LONGFORD

My Lords, I am very glad about that new departure. The Minister has already brought about a change.

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

My Lords, I am grateful, although I do not accept commendation quite so rapidly as that. It is something which has been going on, and I was pleased to see that it had been going on, long before I got there.

There was also what I must call sombre reference to a decline in the morale of the Service; to the vexation of governors; and to the risk of total breakdown of the system. I feel that this is not the moment for me to deal specifically with all of these criticisms and I do not suppose that my noble friend expects me to do so today. There is a particularly appropriate course open to noble Lords. I feel sure that my noble friend, among others, will be submitting his views on these very important issues to the Committee of Inquiry into the United Kingdom Prison Services appointed by my right honourable friends last November under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice May. Whether or not the central management of the Prison Service needs reorganising is among the very matters covered by the committee's wide terms of reference. Although it is not for me to anticipate what view the Committee of Inquiry is likely to take on a particular piece of evidence, I feel sure that it will treat all the evidence that it receives, from my noble friend, from other noble Lords and from eleswhere, very seriously indeed.

There is a further point, while I am dealing with this series of criticisms that have been made, to which I ought to make further brief reference. That is the question of whether or not the Home Office would deal with the allegation by prison governors that there has been a deplorable failure of leadership. This has been posed and I feel that I should make some reference to it. The Inquiry into the Prison Services has been asked to: inquire into the state of the Prison Services and to make recommendations on a variety of matters including the management of resources and the organisation and management of the Prison Services". The governors, of course, as others, have full opportunity to make their views known to the Committee of Inquiry and I clearly hope that they will be doing so. But it would be quite inappropriate for me to comment on what they may have said before the Inquiry was established or what they might say to it, and to attempt to anticipate those matters in any way.

My Lords, the prison system cannot be isolated from the criminal justice system itself. This was a point that the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, made in his speech. Its role can have no meaning unless it is shaped by the general criminal justice strategy and resources are allocated accordingly. My noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner made a substantial point, if I may say so with respect, on the question of resources. That in no way implies that the Prison Service should not be reformed to enhance its efficiency, satisfaction in the work there, and sense of corporate identity, if reform seems desirable. If the Inquiry should recommend new patterns of structure and management, a new deal for the regions, for example, even the relief of governors from what has been described as "castration", the Government will certainly give these most careful consideration.

Be that as it may, my Lords, L think the criticism of what has been called Home Office failure, since the Prison Commission was abolished, to formulate radical schemes of penal improvement, overlooks the very sizeable amount of work that has been done. Since 1963, there have been many positive developments within the prison system, for example, in prison industries, education, welfare, notwithstanding the accumulating demands upon inadequate resources. These improvements in their own way have matched the many innovations and developments in the non-custodial services. This was mentioned by a number of noble Lords tonight. Both programmes have sought to reduce pressure within and upon the prison system without loss of public confidence. There is a risk, I would suggest, when contrasting the current scene with the Prison Commission era, of exaggerating the present malaise within the Service. We should remember that we are in a new climate of openness and candour about work problems, whether in private industry or in public services.

The third major point which my noble friend raised was his suggestion that the Home Office is ignoring the "fundamental issues". I know it is a keen disappointment to him that the inquiry into the Prison Service has not been empowered to consider wide issues of penal reform such as alternatives to imprisonment and sentencing policy. The reasons for this are simply that the Inquiry already has a large enough task as it is in reviewing questions of organisation, management, structure and pay in the prison services, and that it is in everyone's interest that it should complete that task as soon as possible.

Before passing on to other wider issues, I should like, as it were, to interrupt myself at this point and deal with some of the matters which have been raised by noble Lords during the course of this very interesting debate tonight. Perhaps I may turn first to the matters which were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Elles. I should like to thank her very much indeed for her courtesy and kindness in giving me notice of the specific points that she was proposing to raise. The noble Baroness asked about the Government's intentions concerning Section 47 of the Criminal Law Act 1977, which enables a court partially to suspend sentences of imprisonment and which has not yet been brought into operation. Also the noble Viscount, Lord Ullswater, mentioned this particular point of partially suspended sentences. I cannot make a definitive statement tonight.

The Government have been keeping this matter under very close scrutiny so far as the potential help that this provision might afford to the hard-pressed Prison Service is concerned, and we shall certainly continue to do so. Up to this point, however, they have felt it right to adopt a cautious approach. There is a risk, to which several Members of your Lordships' House drew attention when the House discussed the inclusion of this provision in the Bill, that the courts might use the new provision in such a way that at any rate the first effects would be to increase the prison population. That is a risk which in present circumstances the Government have not been prepared to run when the prison system has no margin to spare. It is clear of course that to introduce the provision could not initially reduce the adult population because it would not affect the numbers of people received into prison, but rather the length of time they stayed there. The administrative processes would add somewhat to the burdens of establishments. I am able to assure the noble Baroness that the Government will certainly be giving further consideration to this matter and to the points that she has raised.

Baroness ELLES

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply, but he will accept that it is a bit disappointing. When this matter was raised in another place, the Minister, as I understood it, gave unqualified support to this idea. It was not a question of merely sending people to prison who might not have gone there otherwise, but of shortening the sentences and therefore making such places as are available more readily available when needed. I think that the Minister might see whether something could be done about this. It would make a really useful contribution, apart from the fact that it might be beneficial for the prisoner himself. The basis was that the short, sharp sentence of imprisonment would be just as beneficial, if not more beneficial, to the offender as keeping him there for a longer time. The question of not having any supervision order afterwards was something which I know the Government were not keen on at the time, but they may now regret not having introduced the necessity for a supervision order for somebody coming out of prison. I shall not pursue this any more, but I hope that the Minister will take this on board and have something done about it.

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for not wishing to pursue this in further detail. I can certainly confirm the assurance that I have already given her that this matter will be actively further considered.

The noble Baroness also raised the question of open prisons and suggested that we could make much greater use of open prisons. In fact, the position is not quite as stated by the noble Baroness. On the 15th January, I understand that the numbers in open prisons totalled 2,947 and there were 581 vacancies. I can certainly assure her that every effort is made to find suitable prisoners for open conditions, but I fear this is probably too large a subject to take up in detail tonight.

So far as fine defaulters are concerned—a particular category she was concerned about—there are about a thousand in custody at any one time. More than half of them are committed for one month or less, and a quarter of them settle their debt within three days. So there are comparatively few for whom transfer to an open prison is a possible move. In October last there were about 40 defaulters altogether in open prisons, but nevertheless it is something which is being catered for.

The noble Baroness's other specific point concerned the question of unruly young people and the question of secure accommodation in relation to that. I think this was also something to which the noble Lord, Lord Allen, made reference, in a rather different context, in his speech. During the last two years well over £53/4 million has been made available to local authorities from central Government in the form of capital grants for secure accommodation. As the noble Baroness will appreciate, this is very much a matter for the Department of Health and Social Security and the local authorities rather than my Department. However, when the number of places at present planned or under construction are completed, the existing provision will be more than doubled. I know there are problems about running costs, but local authorities' revenue expenditure on children's services has, I understand, increased by 30 per cent. in real terms between 1974–5 and 1977–8. If there are further details to be given, I would be happy to provide them for the noble Baroness, if she would be interested—

Baroness MASHAM of ILTON

My Lords, I also mentioned that matter. Might I ask the noble Lord how many secure units are there at the moment, and where are they?

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for reminding me that she also raised this matter. I am just rapidly looking through my papers, and I do not think I am able at this moment to provide her with the answer she needs. My right honourable friend Mr. Moyle, in another place on 24th January this year, referred to 34 community homes in England as having secure places attached, other than single separation rooms. He said that there were 296 long- and short-term secure places in community homes. Then he gave a table with specific details. Perhaps that goes some way towards meeting the point of the noble Baroness, but I will, if I may, follow up her query specifically and write to her.

Baroness ELLES

My Lords, I apologise for interjecting again. Is it not a fact that the community home can refuse to have somebody who has what is termed an "unruly certificate"? And is not that one of the difficulties in dealing with these specific cases and one of the reasons they are sent to adult prisons? Again, I will not press the matter now, but I should be grateful to have an answer from the noble Lord at a later stage.

Lord BOSTON of FAVERSHAM

My Lords, I will certainly do that, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the way this has been raised. Perhaps I can send to both noble Baronesses the information they have asked for.

It might also be helpful if at this stage I were to deal with one or two other points which have been raised in the course of the debate. I have already made a reference to one of the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Ullswater; and, in a constructive speech, if I may say so with respect, he also dealt with the question of young adult offenders. He particularly referred to the Green Paper, Youth Custody and Supervision: A New Sentence. I should very much like to follow that up and give him further details, but in view of the lateness of the hour I know he will forgive me for not going into further details. Perhaps I might say, however, that the House is very grateful to him for having drawn this to our attention during the debate.

This Green Paper is a good example of forward thinking by the Home Office. Perhaps I am in a reasonable position to say that, because the forward thinking was done before I got there, and so it is credit which I am passing on to other people. Comments are invited on the Green Paper by June this year and again, thanks to the noble Viscount, this provides an opportunity for those both here and outside to be reminded that there is this date to be aimed for. This was also a matter which the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, mentioned, and I would join with the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, in saying that her speech was characteristically thoughtful and constructive, and was, indeed, a most moving one, too. In the course of her speech, Lady Masham asked about the Whitley Council, and I am able to say that governors are represented on the Home Office Whitley Council. There is a Prison Department Whitley Council, on which the Prison Officers' Association is represented. The future form of industrial relations machinery is one of the matters on which the inquiry into the Prison Service has been asked to advise.

Then there was reference to police matters in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and I am grateful to him for letting me know that he was thinking of raising those points in this debate. He has, of course, taken a long-standing and very close interest in police matters. These are subjects which do not always attract as much public attention as they ought to do, so I am grateful to him for raising these matters tonight, as I am sure we all are. I should also like to join with him in recognising that penal affairs and the Home Secretary's responsibility for prisons must be seen in a wider law and order context.

So far as some of the noble Lord's individual points are concerned, one or two detailed questions have already been answered by my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich, to whom I am grateful, and, I can say—it is not really for me to say so—with complete accuracy. He mentioned the question of inspections. He also mentioned the Police Advisory Board, and it is the case that a Minister is always in the chair there. Again, I will certainly very happily provide the noble Lord with any further details, should they be needed, on the points that he raised.

My noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner raised a number of points, to one of which I have already referred. But in the course of his remarks he raised the rather hair-raising spectre of—according to the information with which he had been provided—some 300 people dealing with the letters that he mentioned. I am very happy indeed to be able to give him a firm assurance, which he will be able to pass on to the source of that information, that that is not the case. In fact, this number of people would represent broadly the strength of all ranks at Prison Department headquarters at Eccleston Square in London. I do not have the precise numbers of people who are engaged on this work, but I can assure him that it is a modest number.

At this point, it would perhaps be right that I should extend my response to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Longford a little beyond the area of prisons, and perhaps I may do this rather rapidly. For my own part, I confess—with the diffidence of one who is new to these matters seen from this angle, at least—that once or twice I was left in two minds whether the suggestion to reorganise the Home Office was confined to the Prison Department and the Prison Service or whether it went a good deal wider. Is it being suggested, for example, that over the whole field of Home Office law and order responsibilities there was a failure of Ministerial and Departmental leadership, an ineffective structure and organisation, a failure to grasp the gravity of the situation and so on? If so, I feel it only right to make clear that Her Majesty's Government emphatically reject any such assessment. If not, then it seems to me that, however well-intentioned, this view of the troubles of the Prison Service was taken within too narrow a focus. We should not forget, I venture to submit, that the Prison Service is a part—a very important part, but a part all the same—of the criminal justice system as a whole; nor should we forget that it is crucial to the criminal justice system that there should be a co-ordinated view of policies and administration.

The need for unity within the system imposes important constraints on its various parts. It demands, for example, the recognition of a common purpose and a strategy, a sensible sharing of available resources, the encouragement of mutual support between services and informed interest by the public. These are the objectives that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and his colleagues have been seeking in recent years and which were described in the working paper A Review of Criminal Justice Policy 1976, published by the Home Office at the end of 1977.

One example of the inter-relationships within the criminal justice system is the problem of what are often called—indeed, tonight they have been referred to in this way—socially inadequate offenders. To illustrate this point, I should like to refer further to the programme of research that we have in hand on this subject, in which my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich took a special interest. I am sure that we are grateful to my noble friend for raising this matter today. Indeed, I am grateful to him for having given me notice that he was going to mention it.

There is, I think, a fair measure of agreement that imprisonment should be used as a last resort for offenders convicted of serious offences, particularly those involving danger to the public. Yet recidivist petty offenders serving short sentences continue to form a substantial part of the prison population. This group of offenders, many of whom are without stable community ties, in general constitute more of a nuisance than a danger to society, and a prison sentence is often an inappropriate method of dealing with them. It is clearly important to try to find alternative ways of dealing with these offenders, both in their own interest and in order to reduce the severe pressure on the prison system, and it is for that reason that we are actively undertaking a programme of research to examine this matter, particularly the three critical points—arrest, sentence and discharge from prison—at which it might be possible to intervene in order to reduce the frequency of contact between socially inadequate offenders and the criminal justice system.

There are separate projects for each of these three areas, as my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich will know. The first—arrest—is designed to look at current police practice towards socially inadequate offenders to see whether any changes in approach would be desirable; the second—sentence—to discover more about the problems faced by magistrates in sentencing such offenders in order to see whether more can be done to encourage greater use of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment; and the third—discharge—to explore ways in which the provision of after-care for these offenders can be strengthened.

Each of these projects has a different time scale, and it is hard to say when final results will be available. Nevertheless, as my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich indicated to the Expenditure Sub-Committee in another place last July, we plan to publish an interim report on these projects in the summer, so I am able to confirm that that date is to be adhered to.

Many points have been raised. I think that we may well have an opportunity to have exchanges on some of them in the near future. There is, however, just one other matter which I should mention tonight; namely, the question of cost. Certainly, when we are considering alternatives, the cost of keeping a person in prison—about £5,000 a year—is much higher than the cost of fining him or of making a community service order, although facilities such as probation hostels and day training centres are not much cheaper than prison. But the cost of each place in prison is largely made up of staff salaries and maintenance costs. The Government cannot abruptly stop spending on these as a preliminary to a transfer of offenders to non-custodial treatment. They would first have to reduce the prison population to a point where fewer staff and buildings were needed. With the present rate of overcrowding, and with the continuing need to maintain a network of establishments throughout the country, the reduction in numbers would have to be very substantial indeed before any saving was achieved, and even then a reduction in prison expenditure would mean that we should have to carry on with the old and unsuitable buildings which we have now.

There are other alternatives to custody which have also been suggested but which, because of the late hour, it is not possible to go into tonight. However, a point which has been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the question of parole, is a particularly important aspect. Perhaps therefore I should just refer to that point.

I shall conclude the Government's Answer on the wrong note if, therefore, I do not finally qualify my rather negative response with a note of realism. Of course, circumstances change and systems and practices become out-of-date. The Department constantly keeps its arrangements under scrutiny. The present structure of the Prison Department arises from a comprehensive management review of the Home Office as a whole conducted in 1975 in conjunction with the Civil Service Department. As I have said, if the Inquiry should recommend further and radical change, its recommendations will of course be most carefully considered. Indeed, one example of this is the question of parole. I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Longford, that there is a case for re-examining the present arrangements. I think the case arises, however, not because of deficiencies in the present scheme—and I think that view was also taken by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—but because it is always desirable to examine new policies after a period of time. That certainly is something which is being done.

My Lords, although I have not been able to give as positive a response as my noble friend would have wished, I feel that in fact we can join in ending on a positive note, for I think we are all agreed on the need for action. There is dissatisfaction, otherwise there would not have been an inquiry and the need for one, and there may be other matters on which we share similar views and beliefs. Not least, I would hope that we are optimists, and one feature which gives grounds for optimism is the quality of people in the Prison Service itself. They do an immensely difficult task and they deserve our warm thanks for that. I have already been impressed by the quality of people in the Service and with the potential that is there. We must all seek to harness that and try to ensure that the feeling of enthusiasm, of which I have no doubt at all they are capable, is released to the full. If we can all join in that there are real grounds for hope.