Prisoners: Aftercare

HL Deb 10 April 1986 vol 473 cc378-403

8.18 p.m.

The Earl of Longford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take steps to improve the arrangements for the aftercare of prisoners.

The noble Earl said: My Lords, we have had many debates on prisons and prisoners in the last 30 years. The aftercare of prisoners has often been touched on, but I cannot recall an occasion when we devoted a whole debate to that subject. I admit that every now and then we have had an arresting discussion about it.

There was a debate in June 1961, 25 years ago, when Lord Montgomery made his maiden speech. He was following a report of a committee initiated by Peter Thompson who is now the director of the Matthew Trust. Lord Montgomery asked the question "What are we to call the present aftercare organisation?" Was it a shambles, a nonsense, a mess? He decided that those words would not do. The organisation looked like being a complete dog's breakfast, which was a favourite expression of the Field Marshal. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Kilmuir, inquired "A dog's breakfast?", not being familiar with the words. "A dog's breakfast", said Lord Montgomery, impatiently, according to the report. "You will not find in a dictionary. It is exactly the opposite of the cat's whiskers". That was Lord Montgomery on the subject of aftercare in the good old days.

Now we are in 1986, not 1961, and the organisation has been considerably hotted-up, developed and expanded. In view of the enormous increase in crime, which has certainly doubled since then, I would not say that the service rendered is obviously more adequate for the ex-prisoner. I am not going to argue that everyone who leaves prison should automatically be able to go to the state and say, "Please find me a job without any effort on my part". I am not a follower—I am afraid I am the opposite of a follower—of Mr. Norman Tebbit, with his idea of getting on your bike and so on. But at the same time I think there is a responsibility on the individual ex-prisoner, as there is on anybody else, to try to find work.

It happened that yesterday I was visiting a prison and I shared a taxi by chance with a man who had been in prison, although in a prison far removed from the one that I was visiting. I asked him what he was doing now. He said, "I am writing crossword puzzles". I said, "Are you making a good living?" He was making, apparently, a very good living. At any rate, he paid for my taxi, so I suppose that he was in clover. I said to him, "Why did you take this up?" "Well", he said, "I couldn't find anything else". Of course you can argue that anybody can make a living out of writing crossword puzzles. I gather that it only takes half an hour for you to write one, if you know the trick—and I learnt all this from him.

That of course is very creditable, but we must assume that most people have not got that particular gift and therefore the state has a heavy responsibility for helping people to find work for themselves. It is a hackneyed expression, a kind of cliché, to talk about our prison service as the Cinderella of the social services. That may be hackneyed, but it is true. Nevertheless, the aftercare of prisoners, I think, can be distinguished within the Cinderella as a Cinderella to end Cinderellas, though it certainly does not end them. It is certainly the most neglected section of the prison system.

It is not difficult to understand why this is likely to be so. It is fairly easy to identify the responsibility of the Home Secretary, and, under him, the Home Office, with the treatment of prisoners who are directly under his control. It is much harder to nail down the responsibility of the Home Secretary, whether Mr. Hurd or any other Home Secretary, for the many thousands of ex-prisoners who are at large in the world, though theoretically, of course, quite a few of those are under supervision.

As it happens, I have a high regard for the present Home Secretary, though I have met him only twice. Within a few weeks of assuming office, he gave a notable address to the New Bridge for ex-Prisoners. He discussed his general approach to penal problems in impressive terms but he did not attempt at that time—and that was soon after he came in last autumn—to indicate the way in which his thoughts were moving; and I hope that they are moving in regard to aftercare. I hope that we shall hear more from the Minister this evening as to how his thought is now proceeding.

For many years, the care of prisoners leaving prison was left to voluntary bodies. I am sure myself that there will always be a special role for voluntary bodies. There is indeed a general argument for voluntary action throughout the social services but I think that in the case of prisoners there is a special reason. Many prisoners, when they leave prison, are fed up with the whole world of restrictions, the whole official world. Usually when they have been to prison they have been themselves partly blameworthy, though they may have been kept in prison for too long and may not have been treated as well as they should have been. But, anyway, there they are.

They have been in prison; they have been pushed about, hardly able to move without getting somebody's permission for maybe a number of years, or maybe they have been in prison for the first time. They come out and they really do not want to have anything more to do, so far as they can help it, with the official world. That is where the voluntary bodies undoubtedly can make a special contribution. It is not the only contribution they can make but it is a special contribution in this field.

Many of us, looking back, campaigned for a number of years for the assumption of a large responsibility by the state for ex-prisoners. The year 1966 was a crucial one in that story. In that year, aftercare became the statutory responsibility of the Probation Service. From then on, every prisoner, in theory at least, coming out of prison was entitled to go to a probation officer and say, "Please help me". That did not exist before and I am putting it quite crudely; but there has been, on paper at least, a remarkable change since 1966.

Mr. Christopher, now chairman of NACRO, when he gave evidence on behalf of NARCO to an inquiry a few years ago said this, and it is rather interesting: In 1966 when aftercare became the statutory responsibility of the Probation Service and there were discussions about the future of NADPAS [which was the preceding body] I advocated the establishment of a new organisation—and with the support of Jack (now Lord) Donaldson". I am very sorry, and I know that the noble Lord is very sorry, that he cannot be with us tonight. But with the support of Lord Donaldson, Mr. Christopher established NACRO. He is convinced, as I am, that there is a very big role for voluntary bodies in this field.

NACRO has done splendid work and so have other voluntary bodies, if I may say so: voluntary bodies such as APEX and the New Bridge which, 30 years ago, I founded with two friends and of which today I am president. We at the New Bridge are indeed fortunate to have as our chairman the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, who will be speaking later, and, as our director, Commander Charles Paterson, who brings all the flexible understanding of human nature that I associate with the Royal Navy. Of course I have nothing against the air force or against the army, but I just feel that that might be a naval quality.

I must leave other speakers to describe the work of their own organisations but I will just offer a few general thoughts and one or two concrete suggestions. The NACRO working group in October 1983 called for a new approach. I repeat that call this evening. There has been no sign of a new approach. I do not think that anyone can say that there has been a new approach since 1983. I think that we must just ask ourselves whether any new approach can now be worked out, adumbrated, even.

The ex-prisoner is a handicapped person, whether male or female. Ex-prisoners are handicapped in the first place by the temperament that landed them in prison for the first time, and possibly for the nth time. They are handicapped, secondly, by the experience of prison. I have known prisoners, even, if I may say so, very distinguished noble Lords, who have benefited from the experience of prison. But few of us suppose that even under an ideal system prison is likely to benefit rather than damage a man or a woman, especially if it is prolonged. Prisoners are handicapped, thirdly, by the stigma attached to ex-prisoners, some of which perhaps is inevitable but most of which should he avoided in a society claiming to be founded on Christian principles.

An additional handicap is the villainous attitude adopted towards prisoners and ex-prisoners by many elements in the press. They batten on the fact that it is impossible to obtain legal aid for a libel action and many are the lies peddled by papers like the Sun and a new entrant, Today. I do not suppose your Lordships read those papers, so that you do not quite know what I am talking about. But if you ever sink to the level of reading the Sun and this other one—what is it called? I think it is called the News of Today. No, it is not the News of Today. I am getting a little confused between the News of the World and Today. At any rate, your Lordships have got the picture.

Papers like those peddle these lies about prisoners and ex-prisoners, they hope, with impunity. Well, perhaps they will not always find the impunity that they look for. I say that some of the stigma is inevitable. When I was chairman of a bank I was often asked whether I would re-employ someone who had been convicted of stealing. I used to reply—and would still reply—that it would be unlikely that such a person would be well suited to re-employment in a bank in that particular occupation. But I expressed my readiness then, and I would do the same today, to interview personally anyone dismissed from the bank and to do my best to obtain for him alternative employment. Whatever happens, in my opinion we cannot shake off this responsibility for ex-prisoners. We cannot manage to dismiss them from our minds and assume that because they have gone wrong once, therefore, we are shot of them.

These handicaps as they exist today, whatever may be the case in an ideal society, constitute the framework within which we are carrying on this discussion. Most of us in this House, and indeed most of the public, are sympathetic to the handicapped; at any rate to some forms of handicap. The assumption—and it is, generally speaking, a correct assumption—is that they are not to blame for their handicaps. Today we have to recover our understanding of the Gospel message: Jesus Christ said that if one sheep is lost it is right to leave the other 99 and seek the lost one in the wilderness. We must take it that that was said without reference to the virtue or otherwise of the lost sheep.

Modern psychiatry comes in here to join hands with Christian tradition. There has been in this respect an advance in the last 20 years but it has gone along with a natural and understandable public hostility to criminals because of the terrible increase in crime. Serious minded people today are much less ready than they were some years ago to identify the goodies and the baddies. Whenever I try to help someone convicted of serious crimes—and I have been visiting prisoners on and off for 50 years—I ask myself whether I am quite certain that under his circumstances I should have behaved any better.

To come down to practicalities, let us look at one or two detailed points. I have given the noble Lord notice, and I shall not develop them too far because think he knows the points at issue. First of all, there is the ex-prisoner's financial situation. On release, prisoners serving over 14 days are eligible for a discharge grant which normally amounts to £27.50 or £64.20 for those who are homeless. The discharge grant is equivalent to, and paid instead of, the ex-prisoner's first week's social security entitlement. This point may be raised by other speakers, but I put it to the noble Lord that this is totally inadequate in view of the special needs of the prisoner when he first comes out. One can think of clothes or the funds necessary to look for a job. One can think of many peculiar features in the situation. I must ask the noble Lord whether he will at least take up with his noble friend the question of this grant.

The voluntary bodies, NACRO, NAPO and for that matter the New Bridge, have long argued that prisoners should receive a resettlement grant to take account of the financial problems and needs of the period immediately following release. It should be equivalent to the average weekly industrial wage. The noble Lord has had notice of that question and I hope he will be able to say something to encourage us.

Then there is homelessness. It has been estimated that over half of those discharged from prisons in London and the South East are "quite possibly homeless". Here I would deliver one sharp criticism of our rulers. There is a current cause for concern in the freeze since April 1985 of Home Office grants to new hostels for offenders. These hostels are run by voluntary organisations. The cost to the Home Office of the aftercare hostel scheme in 1983–84 was £4¼ million, and this was about the same as running Bedford Prison in that year. Bedford Prison has an average prison population of 321, whereas the number of beds in the aftercare hostel scheme is over 4,000. Informed estimates suggest that at least another 1,500 places are needed. I would again, having given notice, ask the noble Lord whether he can say anything about relaxing the freeze on hostel places. I could also talk about employment, but I think other speakers will be able to develop that. There is obviously a crying need.

I would mention two other points before I close. Speaking now from the point of view of the New Bridge in particular—but all these points are generally common to the voluntary bodies—there has been a great development since I first became involved in the subject in befriending during imprisonment. When, with others, I first started the New Bridge, we were thinking entirely of the period after imprisonment; but now there is a great deal of stress being laid in the voluntary bodies on befriending during imprisonment. That is becoming ever more important.

What people in the New Bridge say depresses them at the present time—and my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs may speak in more detail about this—and depresses most people concerned with the subject, is the inadequacy of the briefing given to prisoners on discharge. Honestly, standing here I do not know who should take the main responsibility. There is no doubt at all that the ordinary prisoner is not at all clear in his mind how to proceed when he leaves prison. That is a subject to which a great deal more thought ought to be given.

Speaking on behalf of the voluntary bodies in a general sense—no one has asked me to speak on their behalf, but I have been involved with this for so long that I feel entitled to do so—naturally I do not deny that I hope much more financial support will be forthcoming not only for the New Bridge but for the other voluntary bodies in this field. The Home Secretary in the fine address to the New Bridge which I mentioned earlier ended on this note: The personality and commitment of those who serve in the prison service and the probation and social services, and those who work with voluntary groups such as the New Bridge, helping and befriending those released from prison and working with offenders in the community, are crucially important". That was a tribute well paid and well received.

The present Home Secretary I accept as a man of exceptional ability. I once took him for an old Wykehamist, but that turned out to be a mistake. He is an old Etonian scholar, but some old Etonians would say that was the same thing. He is a brilliant and high minded man. Let us see what he can do for us all in this regard. Will he run his term—he cannot be there for ever—without doing anything at all for aftercare? Will he make a real impact on this subject? I hope we shall receive an encouraging answer from the noble Lord who is so acceptable on these matters tonight.

8.38 p.m.

Lord Hooson

My Lords, I am sure the whole House is very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for introducing this subject this evening. Indeed, I could not help thinking as he opened his speech that while he has breath in his body we shall not be allowed in this House at least to forget our responsibilities to prisoners and ex-prisoners.

I was first interested in the problem of aftercare by one of the pioneers in this field, Merfyn Turner, the founder of Norman House, or Dr. Merfyn Turner as he now is, having received a well deserved honorary degree in recognition of his great services. That was in the 1950s. I remember visiting there in the early 1960s when, as I can well imagine, the late Lord Montgomery was entirely justified in describing the aftercare services as being a dog's breakfast. Certainly since that time a great deal has been done but in an ever-increasing field. No doubt the involvement of the probation and aftercare services—that is, their official involvement—and the system of grants for voluntary hostels run by voluntary bodies—although there is a freeze on that at the moment—have been of great value.

Many places have been provided for people who have come out of prison in the first instance, although there is a great deal yet to be done. Yet one has the feeling that the whole thing is a "first aid" approach. The problem is ever increasing, as are the problems facing ex-prisoners described so graphically and realistically in various documents—for example NACRO have issued Preparation for Release, the submission to the Inspectorate of Prisons, and The Re-settlement of Ex- Offenders, and similar documents. I suppose that if one were to continue simply with the first-aid approach—and it needs to be continued in any event—the whole service would need more money. It needs greater personnel and greater involvement by the voluntary bodies, and in particular their involvement at an earlier stage within the prisons so that they know exactly who they are dealing with and what problems they are going to face.

I am sure that there is much greater scope for the involvement of voluntary bodies and individuals who can be persuaded, through the various voluntary organisations, to take an interest in ex-prisoners. As the noble Earl, Lord Longford, so graphically pointed out, the problems facing ex-prisoners within the country, whether they are first-time ex-prisoners or whether they have been in and out of prison for many years, are enormous. I feel we tend not to appreciate fully the problems that they face.

I have no doubt whatever that the change from the hostel idea to the house idea has a great deal to commend it. Norman House always made a tremendous impression on me and, in particular, their idea of the second-stage house. The second-stage house is the old Victorian parsonage somewhere in London which was adapted as the second house, where ex-prisoners lived together, having passed in the first stage through Norman House. They formed a community. They were, and still are, self-supporting through their own earnings. I believe that these days they do not even have resident housekeepers or anything like that. There are 14 ex-prisoners at a time there. Some have been there for a long time; some went on to some success (there were even two, at least, professional successes from the house). Others lived very sensible, useful lives and still do. Some died there, and others were recidivists and fell by the wayside.

I am told that the first quality one needs if one is absorbed by this kind of work and becomes one of those people who are dedicated to helping in the aftercare service is to get rid of any over-optimistic ideas one may have. One must be prepared realistically to face the fact that what the ex-prisoner really needs is a friend he can phone, can rely on and take advice from. Very often there is really nothing more one can do than that, because one must gradually build up self-respect, confidence and so on.

However, to return to the second-stage house, I think it is right to say that the ex-prisoners fund themselves and that by and large they have been successful, although of course there are bound to be people who fall by the wayside. I think the extension of this idea could be very beneficial.

There has been a freeze on the grants for hostels. I hope the Home Secretary has also been looking at the possibility of voluntary bodies being able to set up not so much hostels as houses, where people can be under the maximum pressure to restructure their own lives. It seems to me that is the key. When people have been institutionalised for so long, as many have, it is very important that they be given the maximum opportunity to restructure their own lives and to find themselves within a society. Within the second house they have a society entirely composed of ex-prisoners, where they can support each other.

I should like to broaden the approach to this debate a little. What are we trying to achieve with the whole penal system within this country? The Victorians at least had a theory about it. They had a purpose. The idea was that there was a large stone cell where a man was kept on his own—though we put three or four in such cells now—and where he could communicate with his Maker. There was the belief that that was important. The Victorians had a belief and a policy with regard to their penal system. Indeed, when I started at the Bar there was still an optimistic approach on penal policy and there were still a considerable number of idealists around who wanted to achieve reform, or something, within the prison system. They wanted to reform the inmates, and so on.

What is the present approach? Is it merely containment? What is it? In this country we are so ignorant, I find, of experiments that have been conducted in other countries. We think that we have been in the vanguard of development of prisons, whereas in fact we have been left behind years ago. May I suggest that we are approaching the stage where one should have something like a Royal Commission to look at the whole question of the penal system within the country, to ask: what are we trying to achieve and how are we going to achieve it?

May I suggest, for example, that consideration should be given to the aftercare service being made part of the prison sentence? Perhaps I may just illustrate what I have in mind. So many problems arise from what may be called the almost dedicated prisoner, who may be in and out of local prisons—in for 12 months, 18 months or two years; then back for six months, and then probation, into community service and back inside again. There are many of them today.

Suppose we had a sentence of 12 months, structured in such a way that the first four months were served within a local prison in confinement and the second four months were served in open or semi-open conditions. That is, we could have camps where they could do work for the benefit of the community. As an example, prisoners serving part of their sentence in Finland do a great deal of work on the roads. In Portugal they do a great deal of work on helping to restore or build municipal buildings. Where is the comparable effort in this country?

I suggest that the third period of four months could be spent in preparation for eventual freedom, in trying to restore a position within the community and getting accustomed again to ordinary civilian life. I suggest that the sentence should be structured in that way, so that every prisoner really is subject to almost a compulsory preparatory stage, instead of the voluntary aftercare which occurs at the moment. Then we could take it even further than that at a later stage.

The truth is that of course within the prison system there is an aristocracy of prisoners, as we all know; and they will have nothing to do with the aftercare service. Others, by and large, are interested in what they can get out of it: one cannot blame them for that. Some of them know how to run the system and I cannot help thinking, when reading some of the NACRO reports, that when one pushes for additional money and although they do need money, very often when a fellow has just come out of prison and has been given £60, he will probably blow it straight away. Let us be realistic about this. Some need money and will use it sensibly but many others will not. That is one of the problems. There has to be, I think, a graduated system of getting them ready to be involved again in ordinary life.

The truth is that, save for one other country in Western Europe, we have a higher proportion of our population in prison than any other country. It really is time, from the point of view of our own self-interest, that we had a broad look at the whole penal system, including aftercare, to see what we can do to make sure that we hand on to the next generation a better-thought-out system than we have endured during this generation.

8.49 p.m.

Lord Hunt

My Lords, in his opening remarks the noble Earl, Lord Longford, said, I think, that the subject we are debating tonight has been touched upon from time to time but that this is the first time that it has been looked at in depth. I looked through Hansard for the past three or four years to check my facts, and I think he will agree with me that the wider subject of what to do with offenders while in prison and after, and whether or not they should be in prison, has come up quite frequently. It is a frequent topic in your Lordships' House. I believe we shall be discussing it again next week under a different guise.

That all seems to be a measure of the importance of the subject and the concern felt by a number of your Lordships, and of the perplexity as to what we are doing, whether we should be doing it as we are—the conviction of many of us is that we should not—and what should be done about it. We should therefore be grateful to the noble Earl, and we should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Hooson for his interesting remarks. He may be interested to know that when I first thought about what I should say this evening I had in mind to develop the very thought that he put forward. I am glad that he did it, because I shall cut it out of my speech.

The noble Lord put forward the idea of a two-stage sentence. In a certain form that originated in proposals made by Home Office officials some three or four years ago. I believe that it was in the run-up to the Criminal Justice Act 1982. The idea has been developed in speeches in this House, and I am particularly interested in it. This evening, however, we are talking about the situation that we are in and the need for aftercare.

I do not intend to repeat what has been so clearly and so cogently said by both noble Lords about why prisoners need more help on leaving prison than they are currently receiving, but I should like to stress the compelling practical argument for providing it. It is in the public interest, not just that of individual prisoners and not just on the grounds of homelessness. In one form or another, we should be spending much more to help ex-prisoners settle back into the community from which they came. I suggest that our main concern this evening should be about those who go frequently to prison—recidivists—in particular for persistent offences against property.

The cost involved in developing and putting more resources into aftercare would be more than compensated by the staggering aggregate of costs involved in the whole process of the commission of crime—the loss to and compensation of victims; the cost incurred by the police in investigation, in arrest, detention and prosecution; the judicial costs of the trial; and, most significantly, the sheer cost of keeping a prisoner in custody. I believe that at present it is £250 a week.

Research, including Home Office research, does not support the statements that have been made by some people, including politicians who should know better, that crime cannot be attributed to homelessness and joblessness; or, put the other way round, that not having a job and going out without anywhere to stay is not conducive to crime. I am the first person to say that that does not justify crime, but research has clearly shown that it is conducive to crime.

I do not think that many people sufficiently accept that prison alone as a punishment is not a deterrent for more than a very few people, and especially for recidivists. On the contrary, the more often they go in and the longer they stay the less able they are to cope in the community when they come out.

We are perpetuating a vicious and expanding circle of repetitive crime. There is an urgent need to break out of it. The point was particularly well made by the director of NACRO in a letter to The Times on 3rd May 1984. Vivian Stern, the director, was commenting on the Home Office statement of the national objectives and priorities for the probation service. I should perhaps have made it clear that I am particularly concerned with the probation service. Miss Stern said: If society genuinely wishes to reduce the offending of ex-prisoners aftercare must not simply be an afterthought". The National Association of Probation Officers commented on that same statement. I will not quote them, but they made the same point at greater length.

However I will quote, with his permission, from a speech made by my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich when he was speaking in a debate on an Unstarred Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, on 16th May 1984. Again, the subject was the Home Office statement published on 1st May 1984 on the probation service's objectives and priorities. Lord Harris said: If we are going to try to reduce the number of people who get sucked back into prison after a relatively short time in the community, I believe that it is absolutely essential that people at risk"— that is, people at risk of re-offending— emerging from prison … should get all the help that the probation service can give them."—[Official Report, 16/5/84; col. 1481.] I do not suggest that it is exclusively the probation service that should be involved. Your Lordships all know of the very good credentials in this field of Lord Harris. At that time he was speaking as president of the National Association of Senior Probation Officers.

I could go on quoting. I could quote from the Tory Reform Group's document Imprisonment in the '80s, which was published in September 1983, but I am not sure where the Tory Reform Group stands in the popularity polls of the party opposite.

Lord Harris pointed to the probation service. As the noble Earl mentioned, for something like 30 years it has been the main agency for providing statutory and voluntary aftercare for ex-prisoners. Until quite recently its main responsibilities were reflected in its title. It was the Probation and Aftercare Service. I admit that the shortening of that title made it much less cumbersome to deal with, but I sometimes wonder whether the very reference to "Aftercare" is not objectionable and seen as "wet" by many supporters of the party opposite and other people in the country.

From certain views that have been expressed, the inference is all too easily drawn that the punishment of prison is perceived as not enough and that offenders must suffer the consequences of their misdeeds through continuing disadvantages in the community, even when they have completed their custodial sentence. In so far as that is true of some points of view, I say that it is not merely unjust, it is sheer folly. The fact is that we cannot sensibly separate, or place in a descending order of priority, the main functions of the probation service, the main service about which I am talking this evening, as the Home Office policy statement purported to do: advice to the courts; social work with prisoners during custody and with their families; supervision of offenders serving sentences in the community; and, of course, aftercare for ex-prisoners. These are an inseparable, and all of them equal in importance, sequence of duties; and to a large extent they complement one another. To state the obvious, aftercare is the necessary helping hand back into the real world after the unreal world of prison.

The help needed is increasing. The noble Earl made that point. It is increasing greatly. Lord Windlesham, the current chairman of the Parole Board, told me the other day that homelessness among prisoners being assessed for parole amounts to rather more than one-third of the total number being assessed, and something like 10,000 prisoners are assessed for parole every year. I understand also that homelessness has increased by some 70 per cent. during the past six years. Therefore, if the Government genuinely wish to break this vicious circle of crime, one essential step is to restore the higher priority for aftercare to the probation service.

To conclude, I have some questions within the noble Earl's Unstarred Question. Will the Government review their statement of 1st May 1984 on the priorities of the probation service, in terms of its staffing and resources, taking into account the arguments advanced about the importance of this subject of aftercare during this debate?

Turning to the wider issue, which my noble friend so wisely developed briefly in his speech, will the Government consider again the case for giving higher priority to all non-custodial measures, as well as post-custodial measures, to deal with crime, taking into account, if nothing else, the contrasting costs of custody on the one hand and treatment in the community on the other?

9.1 p.m.

Lord Kagan

My Lords, I shall try to avoid repeating what the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and the noble Lords, Lord Hooson and Lord Hunt, said, except to emphasise that the extension of voluntary help to the probation service is the answer, particularly in the case of young people who get sent to prison. We must accept that, before going to prison for the first time, most young people lack parental control and reject school control. They grow up finding their own way, surviving and making their own decisions. But within 10 minutes of going into prison they are deprived of all possibilities of making any decisions. Every decision is made for them and they are then in a complete moral vacuum. Once they have served their sentence and are allowed out, they are in exactly the same position as a man coming up from the deep-sea to the surface without a decompression chamber.

The answer must be an extension of the probation service into the voluntary sector—and I know that noble Lords opposite approve of privatisation. I am sure that many retired people—ex-teachers, ex-bank managers, ex-churchmen and so on—who have a lot of time to spare and little interest with which to fill it, would volunteer lo serve under the aegis and with the co-operation of the probation service.

The important point is that they should enter the life of the prisoner almost on the day that he enters prison, and not afterwards. He would then have help from psychologists and the probation service. Incidentally, there should be more autonomy for the probation service, because at the moment it is looked at in prison as either a necessary, or an unnecessary, encumbrance. At some point it will become apparent which volunteer reacts well to the prisoner and gets response from him. From that moment on a relationship will develop between them.

The disadvantage of the professional probation officer is that every now and then he is changed or the prison is changed, and it is a continuation of the relationship which matters. That person would be a link between the prisoner and his mother, his sweetheart, his family or whatever, and he would create hope and a vision of help at the end of the tunnel. In that way, the prisoner would be guided, through the facilities which exist in prison for training, into learning a job or a skill, and through that link with the outside world would find somebody who was prepared to offer him a job. He would then be integrated slowly, steadily, safely and reliably into society, instead of being jettisoned, as now, out of prison and back to the old environment, where he may drift back into recidivism.

This is nothing new. Strangely enough, in the First World War and during the Russian Revolution, when 6 million adults were killed during the terrible massacres that took place, there were hundreds of thousands of orphaned children adrift who did not know their origin. They were inherited by the state and were called bezprizornie. The Soviet Union did not handle the problem with a lot of cash, because they did not have it. In those days, socialism was still an ideal. But they gathered the children together in schools and then assigned to each child an adult who befriended him or her and who related to them. It is remarkable how well that system worked.

This is not a new experiment. It is not a question of pouring more and more money into the prison service. It might be a good idea to offer to the prison service ex-teachers, rather than continue what is happening now. As the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, pointed out, you would have to change the system. There needs to be a whole fresh look, also, at the relationship with the prison officers. But the key is to identify a person who will act as a moral bailee, or as a moral relative, and who will help the inmate into his future life.

My other suggestion is that if a Royal Commission comes about it should spend quite a lot of time looking at Holland, in particular, as well as at Sweden and Denmark. They have a different attitude in Holland towards prisons, because during the German occupation a lot of people were imprisoned and it almost became a hallmark of respectability to have been in prison. A lot of people who collaborated with the Allies went to prison. The prejudice which exists here does not exist there. One thing is a fact: they have a smaller proportion of the population in prison and make a better job of rehabilitating them. Thank you, my Lords.

9.8 p.m.

Baroness Seear

My Lords, last year at the request of the Howard League I had the privilege of carrying out a small study (much aided by professional assistance) into the question of women in prisons. I am not suggesting that the problems of women and the problems of men are in this matter necessarily identical but I doubt whether the differences are really very great. Until that time, though I was chairman of APEX and therefore at second hand had some knowledge of these questions, I frankly would claim to have no knowledge of this subject. As we would say in the academic world, crime was not my subject. What struck me overwhelmingly was the difficulty of finding out what we thought we were doing by locking up so many people in prison.

I started the study with some questions which are the questions that one would ask in any comparable study in any other sphere: what are the objectives of what we are doing; how are we trying to achieve those objectives; and with what success? Frankly, I think that the objectives of locking people in prison are extremely confused. I do not believe we have a clear idea why we do it. We have a crime problem; we have prisons; and we put the two together. That is about all there is to it. So I would agree very much with my noble friend Lord Hooson that we need a much more fundamental look at the whole question of how we really think we ought to be dealing with the problem of crime and what the purpose of prison is anyway. But that is not the subject we are discussing tonight, though I want to take the opportunity to underline the importance of doing this because it is fundamental to the whole issue.

Tonight we are looking at a narrower and more immediate question about which, without a Royal Commission and indeed without any considerable delay, I believe we could do something and make some contribution at the present time to what is obviously a crying need. Much of what I want to say has already been touched on by other speakers. While in the House tonight there is a good deal of agreement on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, we are deeply confused about what we are doing with the use of the prison system. There are in society at large a very large number of people who continue—perhaps because they have not thought very much about it or have not had the opportunity to examine it very much—to believe that shutting people up in prison is the right response to crime. It is a little depressing to know that a large amount of money which could be used in so many other ways is being spent on putting up yet more and more prisons.

Whether we believe in locking people up or whether we believe that this is fundamentally an inadequate response to the problem, there is surely one point about which we must all be agreed: that it simply is not sensible to have a system which has so little effect that people return again and again to prison. As my noble friend Lord Hunt has said, we have a very large problem of recidivism. When I was talking to the governor of Holloway and I used the word "deterrence", he said, "Don't talk to me about deterrence. These people are old friends. They keep coming back". A probation officer in one of the prisons said, "Of course they come back; they simply cannot cope outside". When you have a prison population in which plus or minus 50 per cent. of the people have been there before, there is surely something pretty badly wrong about the arrangements we are making for people after they come out.

There are all kinds of ways of reducing the prison population, but the simplest would be to take steps to reduce the number of people who for one reason or another find their way back into prison after they have been released. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, to put it at its most hard-nosed level, the cost, as we know, to keep someone in prison is between £200 and £300 a week. That varies, I know, according to different prisons, and the figure is no doubt going up all the time. It surely means that if we can take effective steps, by stopping the return of people to prison, to keep them out of prison, that would release money in order to do things in the preventive and aftercare fields which would assist in reducing the numbers. I shall be told—and this is correct—that to some extent it is only a marginal cost and that therefore each prisoner you get out of prison does not save you £300 as the overheads go on. But still it is a considerable saving if you can reduce the number of people who are in prison.

The kind of thing I have very much in mind has already been touched upon, but it came across to me powerfully when I was with the governor of another prison who was saying goodbye to women leaving. There was one woman in her thirties who was not of above-average intelligence. He asked her whether she had her railway ticket, to confirm that she had lodgings arranged in Putney, and whether she had her £60. She replied yes to all three questions. The governor then asked her, "When you get to Euston, what are you going to do?" She replied, "Take a taxi".

I made a quick calculation, as one who takes a taxi all too often, and it was not difficult to predict what the situation was likely to be in respect of that woman in a fortnight's time. A woman such as that needs—does she not?—someone who is prepared to be at the railway station and to take her on the tube instead of in a taxi; someone who could be at the end of a telephone or on whose door she could knock; someone who could keep in touch. One would not need high-powered people to do such work. We already have probation officers' aides. Can we not have more of them?

I am not suggesting that everybody needs such aftercare. Some prisoners will have kept in regular contact with their families. They will go back to their families and will either return to old jobs or obtain new jobs. Such people want to forget all about prison, and that is fine. Aftercare should not be compulsory, but there is a need in some cases for a person who will befriend the prisoner; someone whom the prisoner can get to know, especially over the first two or three months; above all, someone who could help prisoners to obtain some kind of employment and to keep their lodgings.

What happens otherwise is that the social security money only just meets the rent and a bit over. The discharged prisoner then runs out of money and cannot get a job. Sooner or later, they commit some foolish act and find themselves back in prison, with, as one probation officer said to me, some relief on their part because many of them find it is just too difficult to cope in the outside world.

I cannot believe that it would be too difficult to provide aftercare of the kind I have described. I recognise that it is first aid, as my noble friend Lord Hooson said. However, it would surely be useful and in the long run it would be inexpensive first aid. That is one of the first proposals I would urge upon the Government, and it could be implemented quite quickly.

There should be much greater help for people in the way of personal contact and personal befriending, with the helper being able to give assistance with the absolute basics in regard to travelling about, getting and keeping accommodation, getting and keeping human contact and preferably getting and keeping employment. In these days of unemployment, for a person who has a prison sentence and who had little to offer in the way of skills before he went into prison, the chance of getting a job after his discharge is pretty bleak.

The second thing I would urge is this. Here I am speaking more as the chairman of APEX, and I should like to pay tribute to the Home Office for the help that APEX has had and in anticipation of the further help it hopes to get. APEX and similar bodies, such as NACRO on a much larger scale, arrange the provision of small training units where young offenders can go to. APEX has 11 such units and NACRO has a great many more.

At those units, young offenders can be trained in skills and they can establish human relationships with people who can counsel them, help them, drive them and assist them in obtaining jobs. I am glad to say that APEX has a good record of getting work for people who have attended such establishments so that they can get into employment, earn some money and get a foot on the ladder again. That, above all else, is what will stop such young people from going back to prison. From society's point of view, as well as from the point of view of the people concerned, that is surely what we want to do.

What I am asking at the present time is for the extension of the probation service so that there is personal contact, increased help and a training establishment which can offer skills and assistance with obtaining employment and which can at the same time (because this is an important part) provide the personal contact and friendship that people in such circumstances need above all else.

9.19 p.m.

Baroness Ewart-Biggs

My Lords, as my noble friend and other noble Lords have said, it is certainly not by a long chalk the first time that my noble friend has brought up some aspect of our penal system for debate in your Lordships' House. I know that all of us who are concerned with this particular part of our national life are always grateful to him for his perpetual commitment, though I must say, by the look of the Government Back-Benches, that perhaps he has not hit on a favourite topic so far as they are concerned.

I think it would be right to say that never before has my noble friend succeeded in making a debate on this subject of the aftercare of prisoners coincide with a time when all seems not to be well within our prison service. Indeed, the situation appears to be very serious at the moment and what is happening must be proof of certain failures within our penal system. First of all, we are faced with a situation in which the prison officers feel themselves to be under such pressure that they can no longer continue to carry out their duties. Secondly, there are a record number of 46,300 prisoners in custody in England and Wales and an unacceptable proportion—a fifth—of those prisoners are unconvicted and awaiting trial. The last statistic I shall give your Lordships is the reconviction rate within two years following release, which for adult men was as high as 58 per cent. in 1981. For young offenders, the reconviction rate is even higher, of course.

As noble Lords have already said, those rates are not altogether surprising if we consider the circumstances in which many prisoners are released. If any of us in this House found ourself suddenly on the streets tomorrrow without accommodation or a job, perhaps friendless and with the equivalent of only one week's social security payment in our pockets, how would we cope with the situation? Moreover, ex-prisoners who find themselves in this position also face another serious problem, which is the stigma of having served a prison sentence. So when we consider this state of affairs we can only ask ourselves what has gone wrong, and the noble Lords, Lord Hooson and Lord Hunt, have already asked that question.

I am reminded of a very telling comment made a few weeks ago by Her Royal Highness Princess Anne when she was presenting the awards for the newly established Butler Trust. She referred to the "forgotten service", regretting the fact that we do not regard our prisons in the same light as we regard our schools and hospitals. She said: When offenders are put into prison most people forget about them, or would like to forget about them. However, it is expected that these offenders will emerge as changed people". And she concluded, "How, one might ask?" I felt that that was a very sensible remark for Princess Anne to make.

Surely all the evidence at present points to the tact that the penal policy of this country is still heavily prison-based. Public attitudes are consistently and crudely influenced, and indeed coarsened, by many reports in our national press which focus wholly on horrific crimes that have been committed and the punishments that are meted out, and the call for retribution seems to be the order of the day. Only this morning I read in my newspaper that no less a person than the chairman of the government party, in an address that he gave yesterday in St. James's church, called for stiffer sentences to deter crime. This was inspite of the fact that, as every speaker tonight has said and as I hope to show, stiff sentences without the inclusion of remedial measures in prison do not deter.

Surely this must point to the need for a major shift in both emphasis and resources away from custodial toward non-custodial measures. My noble friend is asking for this in his Question this evening. He is asking for an improvement in the arrangements for the aftercare of prisoners because it is both humane and the only constructive way of dealing with those who offend so as to restore them and enable them to fill a useful place in society.

I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, speaking about the wider principles behind our penal system and what we were actually trying to do, whether it was a matter of punishing more people and building more prisons or whether there was another objective behind it. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, spoke about attitudes. I agree that at present our values seem to be that those who talk about prevention or remedy are considered rather wet and that punishment is considered more appropriate.

I should like for a few minutes to put forward some ideas relating to how the aftercare of prisoners could be improved. It has to be recognised that aftercare begins when the offender is first put into custody. This has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kagan. He confirmed that in order to help a prisoner to reintegrate into society on release, preparations for the release should start early in his sentence. For instance, as NACRO so clearly showed in its excellent submission called Preparation for Release, there should be an initial interview for prisoners on reception to identify problems needing immediate attention. If a prisoner had a house tenancy, inquiries might be made to see whether the tenancy can be kept open for the time when he is released.

He might have a job that could be kept open. If the crime for which he is in prison is related to drink, drugs, a sexual offence or gambling, some counselling or therapy might be usefully undertaken. The prisoner might be asked whether his dependants are cared for and inquiries made into simple issues such as whether the gas and electricity were turned off. I should have thought that this schedule for prisoners immediately on imprisonment was extremely practical.

Following that, a planned programme of activity during his sentence should immediately be devised with the aim of minimising the brutalising effects of imprisonment and ensuring that the prisoner, when released, takes a constructive place in society. The New Bridge that my noble friend, as he has said, set up many years ago and of which I am now fortunate enough to be chairman, provides an important service. It is a befriending service. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, mentioned the great need for the befriending of prisoners during their sentence and after their release. We have 125 voluntary associates regularly visiting prisons in various parts of the country. Sometimes they represent the only link that a prisoner has with the outside world. They remain in contact, if necessary, to ease the prisoner's way back into the community. Strong links can be established. Indeed, one of our voluntary associates married the prisoner she had been visiting. So we could not have done better than that.

While talking of the crucial importance of a link, I cannot resist commenting upon what in my view is one of the worst aspects of the prison system though it is not actually concerned with the subject we are discussing. I believe that our policy over visiting in prisons is completely destructive. I do not see how sentenced prisoners, on the basis of 13 visits a year of half an hour each, can keep in touch with a wife, how they can plan to build a life again together during those hasty half-hours and how children can possibly maintain a link with their mother during such minimal visits.

In other countries, visits are actually encouraged. Sometimes this is simply to keep the prisoner in food. Nevertheless, visits are encouraged. They enable the prisoner to maintain a vital link with his family for the time when he comes out of prison. I feel that our visiting policy is not only inhuman and very primitive, but also completely stupid and counter-productive.

The last stage of throughcare, as I think it is called by some organisations, is what happens immediately prior to release. Here again, one must pay tribute to the recommendations in two excellent NACRO documents, the one I have already mentioned and another called The Resettlement of Ex-Offenders: Towards a New Approach. However, as has already been said, from their experience of newly-released prisoners New Bridge believe the briefing on discharge to be totally insufficient. There clearly is a case for greater co-operation between the prisons, voluntary organisations and statutory bodies to ensure that offenders are as well equipped as possible before they leave prison. Otherwise, once they are released it may be too late.

Finally, perhaps I may say a word about the major problems facing prisoners when they are released from prison, and what more could be done to assist them. Previous speakers have touched on several of these points. There is general agreement that the worst difficulty which they face is over accommodation. We have already been given the figures for prisoners who are homeless on release. There is no doubt that homelessness is closely connected with reoffending. One can see that, without accommodation, discharged prisoners have problems in claiming social security benefits. They find it difficult to get work, and totally impossible to establish themselves in normal life.

The second major problem is employment. Here the New Bridge has a very high record in finding jobs for its clients. There are three London offices and as many as 45 per cent. of the ex-prisoners who come to New Bridge for employment are found jobs. One must very much admire some of the employers who go out of their way to give work to an ex-offender. Fortunately the relationship between the New Bridge and those employers is a very close one.

Thirdly, there is the very tight financial situation in which an ex-prisoner finds himself. This again has been touched upon. The sum of £64.20 is not very much when one thinks of the initial expenses that he will have in order to try to get himself established. He will have fares to pay in order to look for a job, newspapers to buy and telephone calls to make. That small amount of money will disappear very quickly indeed. I would wholeheartedly support the suggestion which has been put forward by NACRO that there should be a resettlement grant given to all ex-offenders which would be equivalent to the average weekly industrial wage. It would at least mean that an ex-prisoner would not re-offend because he had not one single penny in his pockets.

Arising from these problems facing prisoners I should like to end by putting the following points to the Minister. I had meant to give him notice of these points but I was unable to prepare them in sufficient time. I would therefore ask the Minister to listen to the points I have to make. I hope that the noble Lord will take them seriously. Some are those which have already been put to him. With regard to the accommodation problem, NACRO is most concerned about the fact that the new hostel grants have been frozen. It is awaiting with anxiety the review of the aftercare hostel scheme, which I understand is long overdue. Perhaps the Minister will be able to give us news of that. NACRO believes that 1,500 more hostel places could be filled.

Secondly, in view of the employment problems, it is important that all prisoners eligible for a place on the Community Programme should take it up immediately on release. I think that everyone feels that the crucial period is immediately after release. If that can be filled, then the risk of reoffending is lessened.

Many prisoners are not aware that in order to take up these community places they have to have registered as unemployed two months previously. It should therefore be part of the Prison Department policy to tell them of their entitlement to register, because being in prison is equivalent to being unemployed. In many cases they cannot take up these places simply because they have not registered as unemployed.

Although many prisons carry out the checklist proposed by NACRO about which I spoke previously, both on arrival and on departure from prison, not all prisons do so. NACRO would like to see the carrying out of these checklists as part of Prison Department policy. That again is a very practical suggestion.

There is one other small point which I should like to mention. I do not see why one cannot remove the small problems that face prisoners. One is that when they take the Giro cheque representing their grant to a post office they very often have no means of identification—for instance, a birth certificate or some such document. It would seem to be possible for the prison to give them, on discharge, some kind of document or piece of paper which would represent a form of identification.

As all noble Lords have said, I wish that the Government would recognise how very cost-effective is the work of the voluntary organisations concerned with aftercare, especially in comparison with the enormous cost of maintaining people in prison. The New Bridge receives a very small allowance. It now looks as though we might be penalised because we have gone to the private sector to raise more money to finance a further befriending service at the youth custody centres and also to extend our employment service. As we have succeeded in raising some money, which we are using, we might receive less money from the Home Office, which seems to be a very great injustice.

Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will listen to what we have said today. We have asked what is the purpose of prison, what place aftercare has in the process, and whether the Government will give aftercare a higher priority in that process. As I say, I hope that the Minister will give us an encouraging answer.

9.36 p.m.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur)

My Lords, I join with those others who have expressed gratitude to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for providing this opportunity to discuss the Government's role in assisting former prisoners to resettle in the community following their release. I am especially grateful for the opportunity that it affords to mention the efforts being made to prepare them for their release because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, and the noble Lord, Lord Kagan, said, that is where the work must start. I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, that I have listened with great care and interest to the views that have been expressed, and I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for giving me notice of the points that he intended to raise.

The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, made some interesting observations about how the penal system generally should be developed, and he was joined in this to some extent by nearly everyone who spoke in the debate. I took note of what was said by the noble Lord, but the penal system does not stand still. It has developed over the years. A number of innovations have been created over many years, some of which have been quite recent, and the penal system will continue to develop. We note the developments that occur abroad. However, not all the circumstances in other countries are comparable, and, as I think the noble Lord acknowledged, that whole question goes considerably wider than the Question on the Order Paper.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, followed the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, and to some extent so did the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, on the same broad theme. The cost of imprisonment is substantial. but the social reasons that lead to an increase in crime, which has led to an increase in imprisonment over a few generations, are deep. They have taken a long time to develop; they are difficult to analyse; and they will take time to put right. Nevertheless, we must tackle them on a variety of fronts.

However, despite the statistics on prison population which have been quoted by your Lordships this evening, the phenomenon which we have in this country is not peculiar to Great Britain. The noble Lord, Lord Kagan, referred to Holland, and I have to say that in January I visited Holland and saw the good work that they are doing there. I agree that to some extent it is different. Nevertheless, the noble Lord will recognise that the prison population in Holland is growing substantially and they are also undertaking a substantial prison building campaign.

Non-custodial sentencing is important. It is something that we stress. Sadly, when one visits particularly the youth custody centres one sees that these young people have had nearly every conceivable sort of non-custodial sentence imposed on them before finally they are placed in custody. It is regrettable and it goes a lot deeper than we have been able to cover in this debate, but nevertheless I value the points that were made.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, many prisoners have experienced difficulties in one or more of the key areas of homelessness, unemployment, social isolation, lack of basic education and lack of marketable skills. This debate provides an opportunity for me to mention the considerable efforts being made to prepare prisoners for their release; efforts which are aimed mainly at those problem areas.

One of the means of providing help is through courses which have been set up in more than half of the prison establishments in England and Wales. Life and social skills courses or pre-release courses are often included in the education programme, but others are organised and tutored by prison officers and probation officers. The courses tutored by prison officers, who receive special training for this task, are a relatively recent development and they are now running in more than 20 establishments. Care is taken to ensure that the syllabus of each course is tailored to reflect the needs of the prisoners taking part, and, in addition to sessions on communications and relationships, subjects covered include looking for a job, personal budgeting, finding accommodation and personal problems such as drug misuse, drinking and gambling.

Although it is not always possible to provide places on courses for all the prisoners who wish to take advantage of them, advice and assistance with specific problems relating to release is always available on an individual basis from staff working in prisons, including prison officers and probation officers. One should add to that that it is important that the prisoners themselves take up the opportunities offered to them at every stage of their prison life.

It is our policy to extend the availability of prerelease courses run by prison officers as resources permit. In addition, the physical education branch of the prison service runs courses for all types of inmates, not only those who are gifted physically. As a result of this there are encouraging instances of prisoners gaining full or part-time employment in jobs teaching disabled people to swim and, via the community sports leaders award scheme, organising groups in deprived urban areas.

An important responsibility of the prison service is to enable prisoners to retain links with the community and, where possible, to help them prepare for their return to it. One of the ways in which this is done is through the home leave scheme. The scheme enables prisoners to spend a few days away from the prison, either at home or in lodgings or a hostel, in conditions of complete freedom. This display of trust goes some way to help to restore self-confidence, and gives prisoners the chance, for example, to contact prospective employers. Overall, home leave can play a useful role in preparing a prisoner for return to life outside and also in helping him maintain family contacts and friendships.

I should at this stage make clear that home leave is not an entitlement; it is a privilege. Prisoners may apply for it. Whether it is granted depends upon a number of factors, including the prisoner's behaviour to date and the prison's assessment as to whether he can be trusted to return to prison on completion of the leave and to refrain from crime while on the outside. This careful approach must surely be right. It would be wholly wrong to release temporarily any prisoner in whom such confidence could not be placed.

At that point I have to draw a little on what the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said when she referred to the inadequacy of aftercare, because one has to remember that some prisoners are wicked. That is why they are there. Therefore, it is important when one is considering the development of leave systems that the population at large are protected from what might go wrong should that unfortunate event occur.

It is for that reason that Category A prisoners are not eligible for home leave. But not all non-Category A sentenced prisoners are eligible either. There are other eligibility restrictions too: the most important is length of sentence. The scheme is confined to medium and long-term prisoners, partly for resource reasons but also because the longer the sentence the more likely the prisoner's family ties are to suffer and the greater the help he will need to maintain them and to prepare for his release.

The report of the Control Review Committee Managing the Long-term Prison System recommended, among other things, that certain aspects of regimes in establishments in lower security categories should be enhanced, in particular those relating to contact between the prisoner and his family and friends in the outside world. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary accepted the merit of this approach and we have now extended the amount of home leave which those prisoners who represent the lowest degree of risk, those in open establishments, may take. Since 1st April this year such prisoners may apply for two day's home leave every four months, once they have completed one-third of their sentence, provided that they are serving sentences of two years or more in the case of men, and 18 months in the case of women. This will make it considerably easier for these prisoners to maintain their family ties and to prepare for and readjust to life outside afterwards.

Pre-release employment scheme hostels are attached to eight prisons and provide an annual capability for some 200 long-term prisoners to spend the last six months of their sentence in ordinary employment, returning to the hostel each evening. The scheme helps prisoners prepare for their return to society in a practical way by providing guidance on how to find employment, covering aspects such as registration, which the noble Baroness Lady Ewart-Biggs referred to, providing work to a regular schedule, dealing with matters such as income tax and national insurance and teaching how to live on a restricted budget—that sort of thing. The scheme is particularly useful for life sentence prisoners who have spent a considerable time in institutions as it provides a halfway house where they can learn how to readapt to everyday things such as travelling alone on public transport. Frequent weekend leaves also enable hostellers to make contacts to ease their return to society. The figure of 200 which I mentioned may not seem large set against the total number of discharges in this category, but we must remember that the majority of long-term prisoners will already have been released on licence before the last six months.

The noble Lord Earl, Lord Longford, referred to discharge grants. A discharge grant is paid to prisoners on release to meet immediate financial needs and it replaces the supplementary benefit which a prisoner could otherwise have claimed from the DHSS for the first week after release. The criteria for eligibility for a grant are therefore broadly similar to DHSS regulations, but grants are not paid to those serving sentences of 14 days' imprisonment or less; to fine defaulters; to civil prisoners; to unconvicted and unsentenced prisoners; or to those prisoners remanded in custody who are later dealt with and discharged from magistrates' courts.

The main reasons for the exclusions are the unacceptable burden which would fall to Prison Department staff in assessing eligibility for a grant when an inmate is released, often at very short notice, from court premises. That is a realistic practical problem which we have to face. Prisoners who do not receive discharge grants are paid a subsistence allowance to cover the journey to their destination. No prisoner should therefore be discharged from prison without some funds to meet his needs.

I noted the suggestion made by the noble Earl, supported by his noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs, about the possibility of introducing a resettlement grant, but one must be realistic about this. Neither this nor an increase in the present scope of discharge grants could be met from current resources. A discharged prisoner should continue to look to the DHSS for any necessary financial assistance.

The noble Baroness raised an interesting point about identification and Giro cheques. I shall certainly consider that to see what can be done, though without any commitment now as I have not had a chance to look into it before now.

The noble Earl, Lord Longford, the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, and others referred to grants given to voluntary aftercare organisations. Of course the role of the voluntary bodies is a most valuable part of many aspects of our social life. I readily acknowledge and welcome the part that is played in relation to the prison side of life.

During 1986–87, the Home Office expects to spend about £6.3 million on grants to voluntary aftercare organisations. The largest of these is to NACRO which receives £626,000 towards the central administrative costs of promoting and developing services and opportunities designed to help offenders resettle and participate fully in the life of the community. In addition, NACRO will receive about £600,000 this year for specific projects and services which it manages and operates for the benefit of offenders and those working with them. Some of those are of an experimental nature aimed at widening and extending the range of aftercare provision.

Although not individually comparable in size with NACRO, which I readily acknowledge is a powerful force, a substantial amount of help is given to various other organisations which provide a network of help to offenders through the provision of day and evening centres, employment projects, defending services (about which both the noble Baronesses, Lady Seear and Lady Ewart-Biggs, feel strongly) and support for prisoners' relatives.

The work of these organisations, albeit on a small scale, is equally important, as I am sure the noble Earl will testify from his involvement with the New Bridge, which, as he said, and as also the noble Baroness said, is one of the bodies supported in this way by the Home Office and which is doubly fortunate in that it has the services of the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, as chairman. The noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, although he is not here, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, through their respective involvement with two other Home Office funded organisations, Selcare Trust and Apex, would also no doubt endorse the important role performed by these organisations, as they have done.

The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, referred to hostels versus houses; Norman House. The voluntary aftercare accommodation scheme offers a range of projects. Some are hostels but many are second stage houses, offering a means of moving on to more independent living. The largest part of the aftercare budget is that which supports the aftercare accommo dation scheme. That scheme provides financial support to voluntary organisations running hostels and other accommodation projects in which places are reserved for offenders under arrangements with the probation service. The link with the probation service is a close one and it is essential, since projects are accepted into the scheme on the recommendation of the chief probation officer of the area probation service in which they are situated. The offender places are filled by referrals made by the probation service.

There is also a link with the wider special needs in the housing field, since about 70 per cent. of all projects in the scheme are jointly funded with the Department of the Environment under its hostel deficit grant scheme. The scheme has grown considerably since it began in 1965 and now provides support to some 320 projects providing about 4,500 places for offenders. Some 2,000 of these places (that is, nearly half) have been provided since 1979. It was against this background of rapid and substantial growth that my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary, as your Lordships have reminded us tonight, when making funds available for additional places in 1984–85, made it clear that no additional resources could be made available for new places in 1985–86 or for the foreseeable period thereafter.

But, at the same time, he asked officials to undertake a review of the scheme to assess need and effectiveness more accurately and to achieve economies and greater efficiency. In the event, the fact-finding stage of the original review in which the voluntary organisations co-operated so helpfully revealed that, while the scheme was greatly valued by the probation service and the voluntary sector, no objective basis existed either for satisfactorily assessing its effectiveness or the need for its expansion. In the light of these conclusions, it was decided to conduct a comprehensive study of the case for devolving to the probation service the responsibility for grant-aiding voluntary aftercare projects and also for administering and financing the present scheme of administration and bail hostels. The study will involve the widest possible consultation with all those concerned, including the voluntary organisations, and no decisions will be taken on the long-term funding of hostel provision until the outcome of the study is known.

As a first step in the consultation process, a discussion paper is to be circulated to the voluntary organisations in the scheme and other interested bodies and representative agencies. I am sure that there will be a lively response to the paper, which of course will be a good thing since it is essential that every voice should be heard in this important matter. I hope that that goes some way—I believe it does—towards the new approach which the noble Earl, Lord Longford, seeks.

I now turn to the probation service. The first point I may perhaps start with is that raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, when he asked whether the Government would review the statement of objectives of the probation service. I understand that the statement of national objectives and priorities has been generally well received by the probation service and is now being adopted as a guide for local objectives by area probation services. Perhaps I may study the noble Lord's remarks, but if he has in mind any particular point that he would like me to take further, I shall be very happy to look at it.

While in custody many prisoners, especially those subject to statutory supervision, will have had contact with a probation officer from their home area, either by visit or by letter, as part of the through-care offered to all prisoners. In 1984 a total of 27,600 young offenders and 11,970 adult offenders were made subject to statutory provision. After release, probation officers, by drawing on their wide experience, are able, as the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, would wish, to assist prisoners with settling back into the community. For those with difficulties of a more specific kind, such as problems of addiction to, for example, drugs, alcohol or gambling, probation officers are able to put ex-prisoners directly in touch with specialist agencies.

Apart from the schemes which are run jointly with voluntary organisations, area probation services have schemes to provide access to accommodation for offenders, including discharged prisoners. Probation officers, for instance, have discretion to place released prisoners in approved probation or probation bail hostels for a short period. Also, as part of their accommodation scheme, most area probation services have landladies who are willing to take released prisoners. The Home Office has approved arrangements to enable suitable landladies to be paid modest amounts for retention of rooms and for compensation for failure to pay rent or for damage caused by probation service clients.

There is, of course, no suggestion that we do shake off concern for ex-prisoners, to use the words used by the noble Earl. I appreciate the concern expressed by your Lordships this evening over the issue of aftercare for prisoners, as indeed does my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, but I hope that this debate, ranging perhaps more widely than just over aftercare, has served to create a greater awareness of how much is being done by the Government directly through the Prison Department and the probation service, and indirectly through important grant-aided organisations, towards the aftercare of prisoners and their rehabilitation within the community. I hope, too, that it has made it clear that we are also studying the arrangements through which this important work is undertaken.

House adjourned one minute before ten o'clock.