Prisoners: Ministerial Responsibilities (Hansard, 16 July 1982)

§ The Earl of Longford
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton)
My Lords, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has allocated to me, under 573 him, responsibility for the management of all prisoners, including those serving life sentences, but has allocated to my honourable and learned friend responsibility, under him, for criminal justice matters, including decisions about the release of life sentence prisoners.

§ The Earl of Longford
My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for that answer and ask him, as an enlightened man who obviously cannot defend this arrangement and as a loyal Minister who cannot do anything else, whether he will take up the matter again with the Home Secretary and with his honourable and learned friend Mr. Mayhew?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, the noble Earl makes an unwarranted assumption when he says that I would not wish to defend the present arrangement, because it works rather well. Therefore, I do not think, although of course I will bring the noble Earl's concern to the attention of my right honourable friend, that I will be pursuing it with quite the vigour that he would wish.

§ Lord Avebury
My Lords, may I ask a question about one aspect which does not seem to work very well, and that is the disparity in treatment between prisoners sentenced for life and prisoners given determinate sentences for similar offences?—because, as the noble Lord will be aware, there are many cases where a life sentence may be given for offences other than homicide. Is it not possible, because two different parts of the Home Office consider these cases, that those sentenced for life serve an inordinately long time in prison compared with those who are given determinate sentences?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, it is generally assumed that life sentences are meant to be longer than sentences for a determinate period.

§ Lord Avebury
My Lords, I am sorry: I did not explain myself properly. I was referring to the disparity in actual time served between the two categories of sentence given. The difference between determinate and indeterminate sentences is out of all proportion to the difference in the gravity of their offences, because of the fact that they are considered in different parts of the Home Office.

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, the arrangements within the Home Office do in fact involve a very high level of advice to the Home Secretary in each case, and in the case of the life sentence prisoner the Home Secretary has to have the advice of the Lord Chief Justice and of the trial judge, if he is available, as well as a recommendation from the Parole Board. The Parole Board, of course, also deals with determinate cases. The discrepancy to which the noble Lord refers is not as great as he supposes, I think, and rests entirely upon the merits of each case.

§ Lord Boston of Faversham
My Lords, would the Minister accept that I, and I am sure all Members of your Lordships' House, have an immense amount of respect for his honourable and learned friend the Minister of State, Mr. Mayhew, and indeed for the abilities of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, which are 574 well known throughout your Lordships' House. However, would he agree that the arrangement which is presently in hand is different from that which has taken place on certain occasions in the past under previous Administrations, and that there is some illogicality in separating these responsibilities between two different Ministers? Might it not be appropriate for him, perhaps in consultation with both the Home Secretary and his honourable and learned friend Mr. Mayhew, to look further into this matter and see whether in fact it is the best arrangement that could be made?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the considerable courtesy of the way he introduced his question. Of course my right honourable friend always pays close attention to what is said in this House and will consider what the noble Lord said in the second part of his question. I should not like to make a more elaborate commitment than that, beyond reassuring your Lordships that, although, on the face of it, there may appear to be an illogicality in remitting the régime for life sentence prisoners to one Minister and their release to another, when you see the importance of the question of release in the context of criminal justice policy and public concern, I think it is right that there should be a fresh pair of eyes looking at that particular issue at ministerial level; but I will draw to the attention of my right honourable friend what the noble Lord has said.

§ Lord Harmar-Nicholls
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that it is common form over the decades, as well as being common sense, that within a department various duties are allocated to various Ministers, because one cannot do the lot, with the Minister in the Cabinet being supreme and making the final decision if there is anything that is considered to be not right?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, I am obliged to my noble friend and I quite agree with him.

§ Lord McCluskey
My Lords, can the Minister tell us about the position in Scotland? If the justification for this division of responsibility is one of principle, as he seems to suggest, is it not the position that there is no such division in Scotland, and that the matters which are said to be separate, and properly separable, are, in fact, handled by one Minister in Scotland?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, the Question that I was asked related to England and Wales—an area with which I am modestly familiar. Things may well be different in Scotland, and that would probably be because the population differs, at least in respect of number, if not of anything else, and presumably the criminal population is equally reduced.

§ Lord Brockway
My Lords, in view of the fact that many occupants of local prisons are now being removed to long-term prisons because of the overcrowding, can the Minister say whether under this new arrangement there will be better co-ordination between the two than there has been in the past?

§ Lord Elton
My Lords, even if that were the case, it would be a different question.