Prison Security Bill

HL Deb 14 February 1992 vol 535 cc963-78

1.27 p.m.

Lord Hesketh

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill he now read a second time.

The primary purpose of the Prison Security Bill is to create a new criminal offence of prison mutiny. It is directed at the kind of serious misconduct which, whatever form it takes, has as its intention the overthrow of lawful authority in a prison. The Bill is a direct response to the very serious disturbances at Strangeways Prison and a number of other prisons in April 1990. These led the previous Home Secretary to appoint an inquiry chaired by Lord Justice Woolf to examine the disturbances and to announce that the Government would introduce legislation to create a new offence of prison mutiny.

I am sure that noble Lords will need little reminding of the scenes we witnessed in our prisons in April 1990. The governor and his staff lost control of Strangeways Prison for 25 days. The interior of the prison was wrecked. Almost 200 prisoners and staff were injured and the damage caused will cost around £60 million to repair.

The conduct that led to wholesale destruction there and elsewhere is simply unacceptable. Its consequences are still with us. There is a shortage of prison places in North-West England which is causing prisoners to be kept in police cells. That is not good for the prisoners and nor is it good for the police. The experience of the disturbances also profoundly affected the prison service staff who were involved. Some of them are still suffering from the consequences of that experience.

Some might say that these disturbances were provoked by crowded and insanitary conditions. The Government do not accept that the conditions could justify the conduct which we saw and of which we heard. They accept that in some prisons conditions must be improved; and in a moment I shall relate briefly some of the measures we have in hand to improve those conditions. But poor conditions will not explain the further serious disturbances we saw last year at new prisons such as Moorland and Brinsford, where the conditions were good and the regime was not oppressive.

Since the 1990 disturbances, Lord Justice Woolf has reported and the Government have issued a White Paper in response to his report. That proposes improvements to regimes and conditions, and also in the field of security and control. The two are linked. We hope that making prisons more decent places in which to live will help to reduce tensions and to prevent a climate in which mutinous behaviour could develop. Prisons with good regimes and fair treatment for prisoners are more likely to be stable and safe. Similarly, improving security and control will enable staff to work constructively with inmates in the knowledge that if there is a breakdown of order, it can more easily be contained.

We are improving sanitation in our older prisons. We remain on course to end the degrading practice of slopping out by the end of 1994. We have agreed to appoint an independent complaints adjudicator this year. We have also begun work on developing a code of standards to help bring about humane and decent conditions in all our prisons. That will cover, among other things, physical conditions and access to work and visits.

Through our prison building programme, we provided 2,500 additional places last year. Another 2,000 will be provided by May this year, and 550 new places are being added at existing establishments. All of those have access to integral sanitation and are built to a better, more modern design.

We are also taking measures to improve security and control in our prisons to make it harder for a mutiny to begin or develop. In the current financial year we are spending £16 million on measures to improve physical security, including the installation of x-ray machines in prisons holding Category A prisoners. That will make it harder to smuggle in weapons that could be used in a mutiny.

We have also issued a new contingency planning manual and a new security manual, which take account of many of the security proposals in the Woolf Report. All those measures will help to contain serious incidents or to deal with them when they arise.

The Prison Security Bill complements those measures. We are improving our prisons, but we need also to deter prisoners from wrecking them. The new offence of prison mutiny, which is designed specifically to deter serious disturbances in our prisons, will bring home to prisoners more clearly than before the severe consequences of mutinous conduct.

There is, of course, a range of other measures which can be used to deal with prisoners involved in disturbances. Those include bringing prosecutions for criminal damage, offences against the person, and the offences in the Public Order Act. There are a number of disciplinary offences too. But those have not stemmed the flow of serious disturbances in our prisons. We have come to the view that something else is needed.

The maximum penalty that a governor may impose for a disciplinary offence is 28 days' loss of remission. That penalty is severe enough to deal with the great majority of prisoners who cause trouble, but it is insufficient to deal with very serious disturbances of the kind to which I have already referred. Moreover, disciplinary penalties will have no effect if the prisoner is discharged before his case can be heard.

The penalties provided by the law for the criminal offences that I have mentioned are adequate, but the offences themselves are not tailor-made for the sort of behaviour that might constitute mutiny in a prison. They do not directly address the most serious problem which this Bill seeks to address, which arises from the formation of a common purpose to overthrow lawful authority in the prison. They may be applied to the behaviour which follows that, but, if that behaviour takes place behind the closed doors of a prison, it may not be possible to determine who committed the offences. What is more, the instigators may not be at the forefront of the action and may escape prosecution under the existing law.

I turn now to the Bill itself. The new offence of prison mutiny is contained in Clause 1. That makes it an offence for two or more prisoners to take part in a prison mutiny. If convicted, such prisoners face a penalty of up to 10 years' imprisonment. The case must be tried in the Crown court and only with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Clause 1 defines what is meant by a mutiny. We could have left that undefined, or relied on a dictionary definition. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary (Fourth Edition) defines mutiny as the refusal of a body of persons under discipline to obey orders, and it helpfully cites the example of the mutiny of the Bengal native troops in 1857. Prisoners, of course, are not soldiers, but they are subject to the lawful requirements of the governor and his officers. We have therefore looked elsewhere for an appropriate definition.

We have followed the recommendation of the Prior Committee in its 1985 report on the prison disciplinary system. The Bill provides that a prison mutiny occurs when two or more prisoners engage in conduct intended to further a common purpose of overthrowing lawful authority in a prison.

When the Bill was introduced in another place, the definition of mutiny was somewhat wider. It also included —again as recommended by the Prior Committee—collective disobedience to lawful authority in such circumstances as to subvert order in a prison. That provision was perceived in another place as going too wide, and capable of penalising any disobedience by prisoners, no matter how trivial. That was never the Government's intention. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary, on consideration, decided that the narrower definition in the Bill now before your Lordships would not only meet the Government's needs, but would make their intentions clearer on the face of the Bill.

The offence of mutiny as now drafted is intended for the most serious disturbances in our prisons. The test in Clause 1(2) is a strict one. It will not penalise minor acts of disobedience, nor passive protests about a particular aspect of the regime, but it will be available for the serious disorder we have witnessed in some prisons in the past two years, so long as it can be proved that at least two prisoners had a common purpose of overthrowing lawful authority in the prison.

There was also some anxiety in another place that a minimum of two prisoners was too low a number to trigger an offence of prison mutiny. The Government considered raising the minimum, but in the end decided to leave it as it was. Any number higher than two is arbitrary. Two was the minimum recommended by the Prior Committee. It is also the number required in the Army Act definition of mutiny, which the Prior Committee took as a model. It would no doubt be a very rare occurrence for the conduct of two prisoners only to get out of control. But, in prison, two prisoners determined to overthrow authority can easily set off a serious disturbance which can quickly escalate to involve others who join in the mayhem. The Bill provides that only two of those involved in a disturbance need have a common purpose of overthrowing lawful authority. That puts a realistic burden on the prosecution and seems right in principle and in practice.

The Bill provides that the intentions and common purpose of prisoners may be inferred from the form and circumstances of their conduct. That is a commonsense provision which is also found in the Public Order Act 1986.

"Taking part" in a mutiny will include both active and passive participation. Prisoners may be drawn towards the scene of a disturbance: to offer moral support, out of curiosity or simply to watch. Their presence adds to the problems of control. Under the Bill, if they are given a reasonable opportunity to leave the scene in safety and fail without reasonable excuse to do so, they will be regarded as taking part in the mutiny itself.

I turn now to Clause 2 leaving behind the issue of mutiny in a prison. Clause 2 deals with the related security issue of assisting escapes. It does several things. First, it widens the scope of the offence in Section 39 of the Prison Act 1952. Under Section 39, it is an offence to convey anything into a prison with intent to facilitate an escape. We looked at this offence carefully in the aftermath of the escape of two IRA remand prisoners from Brixton prison last year. It is doubtful whether it is an offence at present to send anything into a prison by post with intent to facilitate an escape. I am sure that noble Lords will agree with me that it should clearly be an offence, and Clause 2 makes it so.

Secondly, Clause 2 increases the penalties for two escape-related offences. The first is the offence of assisting a prisoner to escape which I have just mentioned. The maximum penalty rises from five to 10 years' imprisonment. The second is the offence in the Criminal Justice Act 1961 of harbouring an escaped prisoner. Here the maximum rises from two years to 10 years.

The purpose of raising these penalties is partly to reinforce society's disapproval of this conduct and partly to correct an anomaly in the law. The maximum penalty for the related offence under the Criminal Law Act 1967 of impeding the apprehension of a person believed to be guilty of an arrestable offence is 10 years' imprisonment. We are taking this opportunity to align the penalties and remove this anomaly. The new penalties in Clause 2 will not apply retrospectively; that is to say, to offences committed before the commencement of the Act.

Finally, Clause 3 provides for the Bill's short title, commencement and extent. We want the offence to be available as soon as possible; that is, two months after Royal Assent. The provisions do not extend beyond England and Wales. There was some concern in another place that the Bill should also extend to Northern Ireland. In view of this, perhaps I could explain that the extent of the Bill was decided by Ministers collectively, taking into account the view of my right honourable friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland that, because of the differing legal provisions and other circumstances in those other parts of Great Britain, the Bill should not extend beyond England and Wales.

This Bill is a direct response to the scenes of destruction which we witnessed in a number of our prisons in April 1990 and which we have seen since then in other prisons, notably Moorland and Brinsford last year. For whatever reason, a number of prisoners in England and Wales have been determined to cause as much destruction as possible. This Bill is aimed directly at such behaviour. It signals our disapproval and will act as a clear warning to those who act in such a way in future. It is a specific response to a specific situation.

I am advised by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that a similar situation does not exist in the Province. Although there have undoubtedly been some very serious incidents in prisons in Northern Ireland, their prisoners are not in a state of mutiny as some of ours undoubtedly have been in the past two years. This may owe something to the constructive atmosphere generated by the strategy document promulgated by the Northern Ireland Prison Department. A criminal offence of mutiny is not needed in the Province. To introduce one without the background of the disturbances we have had would only damage the confidence of the community in the prison system in Northern Ireland. Mutiny is already a disciplinary offence under the Northern Ireland prison rules carrying a maximum penalty of 180 days' loss of remission, in other words the equivalent of a 12-month sentence.

As far as escape-related offences in Clause 2 are concerned, there are already many differences in the legislation governing these offences in Northern Ireland and in England and Wales. Some offences in the Prison Act (Northern Ireland) do not appear in the Prison Act 1952. Of those which do appear, some are differently formulated. There are also many differences in penalties. For example, offences of escape, rescue and prison breach are all dealt with under the common law in England and Wales. There is therefore no maximum penalty. In Northern Ireland, those matters are all statutory offences with fixed maximum penalties of three, seven and seven years respectively.

It would not be right to make piecemeal amendments to the Northern Ireland legislation in this Bill. There is no advantage in seeking parity between the jurisdictions for its own sake. Decisions for Northern Ireland must be made on the basis of what is needed for the Province.

That completes my description of this short but, I hope, useful measure. When it has received Royal Assent prisoners will be told of it when they first enter prison. We hope that it will deter the kind of conduct to which it is addressed. I commend the Bill to the House.

Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Hesketh.)

1.44 p.m.

Baroness Ewart-Biggs

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for having introduced this Bill and I also congratulate him on having risen so splendidly to the occasion of taking on these extra responsibilities. As he said, the Bill came into being as a response to the serious disturbances in our prisons last year, in particular in Strangeways, when there were unprecedented acts of disorder and violence.

As noble Lords will remember, Lord Justice Woolf was asked to set up an inquiry. His recommendations were welcomed by all those concerned with penal issues. I believe it is generally thought that, if his recommendations and those of Judge Stephen Tumim, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, were implemented, our prison system would be immensely improved.

I was glad to hear the noble Lord outlining the measures by which the Government plan to improve the prison regime. I was also glad that he stressed the importance of that. However, I did not agree with him so much when he said that this Bill complemented the measures that were to be taken to improve the prisons. We seriously question whether the provisions contained in the Bill will have the effect of remedying the crisis in our prisons.

We believe that the new offence created is unnecessary and will do nothing to reduce the likelihood of prison riots. Prisoners involved in violence, damage and disorder can already be charged with a wide range of serious criminal offences. If the severe penalties available for these existing offences do not deter rioters, neither will a new offence. Moreover, it must be remembered that Lord Justice Woolf rejected a special measure to deal with prison riots and disturbances and decided that there was no call for the creation of a specific offence of prison mutiny. Therefore, it is difficult to understand exactly who wanted this Bill.

We know that there is a consensus among prison reform groups that the new offence is unnecessary and that in their view it has the sole objective of placating the public after Strangeways and related riots. The Minister mentioned the Public Order Act 1986 which in our view makes the new offence unnecessary. That Act provides, first, for a statutory offence of riot defined as 12 people or more; secondly, for an offence of violent disorder which consists of three people or more; thirdly, for an offence of affray; and, fourthly, for a summary offence of threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour—all of which can be committed in prison.

The Government's White Paper The Prison Disciplinary System of England and Wales was published in response to the Prior Committee's report, which did recommend a special offence. The White Paper came out a year after the Prior Committee's report and there had been a change of mind by that time. The White Paper commented: All of these four offences (under the Public Order Act) may be committed inside a prison service establishment. Accordingly the use or threat of violence in connection with a prison mutiny can be dealt with under the general criminal law. Given the restructuring of public order offences in the Public Order Bill, the Government's view is that there is no need for a further specific offence of prison mutiny". On the debate on the gracious Speech my noble friend Lord Richard made that point when commenting on this Bill. He said: It is difficult to think of an example of a mutiny for which the offence is needed".—[Official Report, 6/11/91; col. 230.] As we all know, the real problems which are so clearly indicated by Lord Justice Woolf are that our prisons are overcrowded, insanitary and a disgrace to a modern civilised nation. The Woolf Report revealed that at the time of the disturbances, Strangeways had certified normal accommodation for 970 prisoners but in effect it held as many as 1,647. The report concluded that that, would make it difficult to provide a constructive regime which would have helped to alleviate the dehumanising effects of the insanitary physical conditions within the prison". That comment was in Lord Justice Woolf s report.

In our view the Bill does nothing to change the disgraceful conditions which exist in our prisons. The disgraceful conditions do not excuse riots, as the noble Lord said, but they certainly, to a great extent, lead to disturbances in prisons.

Considering the provisions of the Bill, and Clause I in particular, we are happy that my right honourable and honourable friends in another place succeeded in persuading the Government to make fundamental changes in the drafting. As it was originally drafted, the offence of prison mutiny could have been committed where no violence or even threatened violence took place. However, Clause 1(2) states that, For the purposes of this section there is a prison mutiny where two or more prisoners, while on the premises of any prison, engage in conduct which is intended to further a common purpose of overthrowing lawful authority in that prison". That is a great improvement. If the change had not been made, the Bill would have encompassed a wide range of non-violent protests for which the draconian penalty of 10 years' imprisonment would have been totally inappropriate.

However, Clause 1(2) contains a provision which gives us considerable concern; namely, that under the Bill as drafted the offence of prison mutiny can be committed by just two people. My colleagues in another place argued that the number was too low and moved an amendment in Committee raising it to 12. The amendment was rejected by the Government. The Minister admitted that there had been forceful arguments in favour of a higher number than the one in the Bill and said that she would reconsider the matter. However, in the end she failed to be persuaded when at Report stage the compromise of six people was put forward. We shall certainly return to the issue in Committee here. We believe that the notion that two people can commit the kind of incident in a prison which we are all concerned to tackle seems far-fetched in the extreme.

We also believe that the number of people who can commit mutiny must be higher than the number of people who can live in one cell. It would be quite wrong for behaviour that takes place in a cell to be caught by the legislation and carry a maximum sentence of 10 years. Surely, three men sharing the cramped conditions of a single cell might give rise to many interactions but they should not fall foul of this legislation.

Clause 1(4) also contains a disturbing proposal. The provision makes it possible to convict prisoners of prison mutiny even when the prosecution has not proved an intention or common purpose to overthrow legitimate authority and the prisoners have not used or threatened violence or criminal damage. The clause states: Where there is a prison mutiny, a prisoner who has or is given a reasonable opportunity of submitting to lawful authority and fails, without reasonable excuse, to do so shall be regarded for the purposes of this section as taking part in the mutiny". It is a worrying provision reminiscent of the old Riot Act. Provided that a general order had been given for prisoners to surrender to the authorities, it would make it possible to charge prisoners, who were present during a "mutiny" but not actively taking part in the action, with a serious criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment. That seems both draconian and unnecessary. Everyone accepts that the prison authorities must have powers to discipline such prisoners. Rule 47(19) of the prison rules which makes it a disciplinary offence for a prisoner to disobey any lawful order gives such powers. Ten years seems a long time to serve for simply having hung around rather a long time on the fringe of, say, a protest about food.

The Minister explained Clause 2 which, as he so rightly said, has a completely different purpose. He explained the new penalties. At Committee stage we may wish to question him as to the length of penalties. It seems a large increase from five years to 10 years for assisting an escape. Even more striking is the increase from two years to 10 years—five times as long—for harbouring or assisting an escaped prisoner. We may wish to return to the lengthy increases in the new penalties.

In conclusion, we find it significant that in Lord Justice Woolf s exhaustive report containing 204 recommendations designed to prevent future prison riots he did not consider it necessary to propose the creation of the offence of prison mutiny. He made it clear instead that the best deterrent of rioting would be the reform of our antiquated, overcrowded prison system. Prisoners with reasonable conditions have a greater incentive to refrain from destroying them. Indeed, if we look around the world we see that riots are much rarer in prison systems which have civilised conditions, active regimes and a greater emphasis on prisoners' rights.

For that and other reasons that I have given, we do not believe that the Bill is necessary. We believe that it will do nothing to deal with the real problems faced by prison governors and prison officers. It merely dwells on the surface of matters and completely fails to get to the heart of what is wrong with our prison system. At best the Bill will do little harm, but there is no reason for adding unnecessary legislation to an already overburdened statute book. If this morning's press reports of the demise of the much decried Asylum Bill are anything to go by, then wasting parliamentary time is surely another consideration.

1.57 p.m.

Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness in offering my congratulations to a popular Chief Whip for having broken the custom of this House. I have attended the House for 25 years and I have never before seen a Chief Whip come down to the arena and face the public—even though it is not a large public today—in the courageous and powerful way in which the noble Lord has done.

Turning to the less important business, the Bill itself, I agree with everything that the noble Baroness said. As it is a harmless and not very important Bill, it is important that I do not repeat what she said, although it is difficult to resist the temptation. That gives me the opportunity to speak briefly.

I have little to add. I had sought to envisage a situation in which the Bill would be effective and the Public Order Act 1986 would not. I suppose that if three prisoners sat in a cell conspiring to begin a mutiny and were eavesdropped upon, it might be desirable to arrest them for conspiring before they tried to involve others or made any threats. But it is a most unlikely situation. In my humble opinion no judge would give a 10-year sentence for the use of words alone. As soon as any action took place, the 1986 Act would apply. However, as window dressing, the Bill may give some reassurance to the public. As a deterrent—the noble Lord expressed quite strong hopes that it would be effective as a deterrent—it may make prisoners more careful in what they say to one another in case they are overheard conspiring. Any two or three prisoners who are overheard talking about anything are likely to be seen as conspiring about a general revolt; they very often are.

In another place my honourable friend Mr. Maclennan said that he had asked the Prison Governors' Association for its opinion. It told him that it was against the Bill. The right honourable lady the Minister said that she had not at that stage heard from the association. Can the noble Lord tell us whether an answer has yet been obtained from the Prison Governors Association? For the moment I stick to the view that it disapproves of the Bill. That is rather important, because the association's members are the people who will have to operate the Bill when it comes into force.

As regards Clause 2, I think there is a need for more severe sentences to be available for elaborate interventions from outside. It is the type of clause which, if it had been added to a more important Bill, we should have been quite happy to support. By "elaborate interventions from outside" I have in mind the use of helicopters. Such attempts have been planned once or twice and stopped once or twice. On one or two occasions they have succeeded. I have in mind also the sending in of firearms or explosives. Terrorist efforts of this kind are bound to continue and will probably become more ingenious and worse. They deserve more serious sanctions. I am entirely in favour of such sanctions. I hope, however, that they will not extend to what we used to call the ordinary decent criminal—the ODC, as we used to call him in Northern Ireland, as opposed to the terrorist—the man who gives his pal a leg-up over the wall or a mother who gives her runaway son a bed. Surely the present penalties are severe enough for people who behave in that way, even though there have to be penalties which must be firmly applied. What I think most of us who are unenthusiastic about the Bill feel is that there is so much urgent work to be done by the Home Office, the prison department and all those concerned to improve what everyone, Government included, regards as the appalling condition of our prisons that it is a serious misapplication of effort to have diverted overworked staff into the quite unnecessary preparation of a Bill of this kind.

One could say a good deal about the details of the Bill but my noble friend on the Labour Front Bench has said most of it. I shall say no more. I entirely agree that Northern Ireland should be left to itself and should not have various changes slipped in through a Bill of this kind. I am happy that we are not adding anything through the Bill to the Northern Ireland arrangements. The Bill is a great disappointment to us all. There is so much that ought to have been done and so much that is not being done. I have not worked out the time between the publication of the Woolf Report and the White Paper. We have not had a word about it in the House and as we now have an election coming on we probably shall not. This is part of the whole putting-off process. It is an effort to satisfy the public which amounts to next to nothing. I cannot thank the noble Lord very much for the Bill, though I think his presentation of it was admirable.

2.3 p.m.

Baroness Mallalieu

My Lords, I have not been in the House for long enough to know that it is unprecedented for a Chief Whip to take the steps and the actions that the noble Lord has taken today. However, from the short time I have been here I have been able to form the view of him that he is well capable of taking care of himself if he descends into the arena; and so his performance has shown.

What I have to say will be brief because I am bound to echo what has been said by those who have spoken before me. The Bill does not seem to merit any prolonged discussion. It is an almost wholly unnecessary little measure. To relate the history of its birth really says it all. In their White Paper of 1986 the Government considered that the use or threat of violence in connection with prison mutiny could be dealt with quite adequately under the general criminal law, and in particular under the Public Order Act. Then came the prison riots of 1990 and the enlightened appointment of Lord Justice Woolf and His Honour Judge Stephen Tumim to prepare a report. The result was, I think it is fair to say, a masterpiece, a comprehensive study of the events, an analysis of the causes of those disturbances and 204 recommendations to improve our prison conditions and prison security for the future. One recommendation which the Woolf Report did not consider it necessary to make was for a measure of this nature.

I welcome what the noble Lord has said about the progress being made to implement some of the Woolf proposals. I am sorry that they appear to be taking so long and I am also sorry that a large number of those proposals have not found favour in the Government's White Paper. Instead of setting out to prepare for a comprehensive overhaul of the prison system, including prison discipline, with planned resources, planned rectification of the defects and, in particular, immediate action on the overcrowding which the Woolf Report identified as at the heart of our prison system problem, the Government have instead elected to produce this cosmetic little Bill. The reason is perhaps obvious to us all: a pending election in which the Government want to be seen to be doing something but lack the will or determination to take the steps which need to be taken for the future of the penal system. Their view of this whole subject appears to extend no further than this spring, which may perhaps be a realistic assessment of their tenure of office.

So they have produced a Bill which no one wants; not the Prison Governors Association, not the Prison Reform Trust, not the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders. No one wants it except for Mr. Baker and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Hesketh. The Bill is in effect the Government's sop to the public. They wish to be seen to be doing something about disturbances in prison but they lack the courage, the inclination and the strength to tackle the problems. So they have produced a measure to deal with the consequences and not with the causes. In fact it is hard to think of a situation when the provisions of Clause I would be appropriate which is not covered adequately by other legislation.

If a prisoner is violent, or threatens violence, the present law can deal with him. If there is insufficient evidence to convict him under the present law, there will be insufficient evidence under this Bill too. It seems clear that there must be some overt act for a conviction. If he is non-violent—if he sits down, or refuses to obey the instructions of a prison officer or uses dumb insolence—existing prison discipline can surely deal with the matter without resorting to the criminal law, without getting the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions to do so, as the Bill requires, and certainly without threatening him with a maximum term of 10 years' imprisonment.

It may be said, and indeed it was said by the noble Lord, that this legislation will not be used for minor offences. If so, what on earth is it to be used for? Officers can no doubt deal with internal prison discipline. If violence follows, as this Government themselves said six years ago, the criminal law is adequate to deal with those offences. Nothing has changed.

Clause 2, which could perhaps be described as the "file in the cake" clause, surprises me. The noble Lord said that he doubted whether somebody sending something into a prison by post to assist an offender to escape would be committing an offence. He may be right, but I am surprised that that conduct is not already covered by the existing provisions of the Prison Act. If there is a loophole in the law in that respect it may be that it needs to be filled. It may also be that the penalties for assisting someone to escape may need strengthening.

However, in my view, there are objectionable features, to which my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs has already drawn attention, in Clauses 1(2) and 1(4). The noble Lord said when he introduced the Bill that it was a specific measure to deal with a specific problem. He indicated that that problem essentially was the type of rioting which we saw in 1990. That was certainly not rioting which involved two people. The provisions of the Bill go much further than the scope which he outlined.

What saddens me is that the Government should have chosen to take up parliamentary time with a measure such as this when the prison system is crying out for a proper, comprehensive and far-reaching programme of legislation to bring our prisons out of the mid-1850s into this century. From this proposal and the way in which the Government reacted to the Woolf Report, it looks as if that programme will have to wait until the next government.

2.10 p.m.

Lord Auckland

My Lords, although I intervene from these Benches the views which I express are my own. I intervene with some trepidation following the speeches of so many legal luminaries and others with much more experience of the matter. In my 30 years in this House I have never served on the Front Bench, in shadow or in substance, and I am not likely to do so now.

I intervene for one particular reason. My wife was a magistrate for nearly 25 years and is now on the supplementary list of magistrates. As part of her training she visited a number of top security prisons. That experience and what she saw depressed her enormously. The present regime of slopping out and being locked up in cells for 23 hours a day in some instances, particularly in a hot summer, obviously has a tinderbox effect.

We have all read about and seen on television the dreadful incidents not only at Strangeways prison but also at Lindholme prison, the new prison in Yorkshire. Although the Bill does not apply to Scotland, as my noble friend the Minister—whom I congratulate on his very enlightened speech—explained, for legal reasons which I do not fully understand although I come from Scotland, it should be borne in mind by your Lordships that the riots at Peterhead prison in particular, in which several prison officers were severely injured, and at Perth prison, which is near my grandparents' family home, also caused a great deal of disturbance.

It is my understanding that these are discretionary penalties. It is not intended that every time there is a prison disturbance those responsible will be sentenced to 10 years in prison. The Bill gives the Crown Court discretion to impose heavier maximum penalties. I believe that the general public will welcome that. Whatever their political persuasion and whatever their walk of life, the public have become sick and tired of such prolonged disturbances and the injuries to prison staff. Prison officers have to be considered as well as the prison governors and the inmates of those establishments.

There are two points which worry me. The first relates to Clause 1(5), which reads: Proceedings for an offence under this section shall not be brought except by or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions". Even to a non-lawyer that makes sense.

I have not had time to give my noble friend notice of this question, but I hope that he will do his best to ensure that prosecutions are brought quickly. All too often prosecutions come very slowly and it is a matter of many months before the defendant is brought before the court, in particular the Crown Court. That is not in the interests of the community as a whole, the prison service, prison staff or indeed the inmates themselves. Therefore I hope that that matter will be looked into.

Another anxiety is that 1994 has been designated as the optimum time when these improvements to prison conditions will have had to be carried out. The Government have an impressive record for new prison building. All governments wish to give and indeed have given the closest attention, within financial constraints, to improving our prisons. I do not agree with some noble Lords opposite that this is a piecemeal Bill or an electioneering Bill. It is a very sad commentary that a Bill of this kind has to be introduced in a civilised country. It is a sad commentary on our times that parliamentary time, whether or not we are near to an election, has to be used for measures of this kind.

I hope that the Government—whichever government is in office after the election takes place—will take very serious note of the Woolf Report, and expedite with extreme urgency the provisions for prisoners in one cell and with proper sanitation. I agree with the noble Baroness that lack of such conditions exacerbates matters. However there was trouble in the new prison in Lanarkshire where there was one prisoner to a cell, and as I said the same happened in the new prison in Yorkshire. I do not believe therefore that it is entirely the old system of three to a cell which creates the problems.

I give a general if rather reluctant welcome to the Bill. It is a great pity that it has to be introduced. However, if the Government had done nothing, they would have been accused of apathy. I hope that, whatever the election brings, the Woolf Report will be implemented as a matter of urgency and that we shall be able to debate it. In the meantime, I give a reluctant welcome to the Bill. I say rather cynically that it is a necessary evil.

Lord Hesketh

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate on the principles of the Bill and I have listened carefully to the points made by noble Lords from all sides of the House. I thank noble Lords for the very nice remarks that they made, which had little to do with the Bill. As the discussion proceeded on Second Reading following my remarks, I began on occasion to feel at something of a disadvantage in this particular subject. However, I hope that I shall be able to respond satisfactorily. I feel that the remarks of my noble friend behind me provide some support and hope that I am not quite as lonely as the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, insisted that I should be.

Both the noble Baronesses, Lady Ewart-Biggs and Lady Mallalieu, raised the point that the Government had changed their position from that given in the response to the Prior Report. I must make entirely clear that they did so on the basis of the reports of the rioting in 1990 and rioting that has taken place since then. That material factor is the reason why they changed their view. I have no reason to believe that they were not right to do so.

All noble Lords, and in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, drew attention to factors other than those which I mentioned in my opening remarks, in particular with regard to the Strangeways riot and the matter of overcrowding. I remind noble Lords that four new prisons opened in 1991, providing a further 2,500 places. Four more are due to open by May of this year providing a further 2,000 places. In addition, a further 550 places will be added to existing establishments. I am sure all noble Lords will say that is not the only answer to the problem. I shall not respond to that as it would draw us into a far wider debate than the debate on the issues covered by the small Bill that we are discussing today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, and other speakers asked why the Bill is necessary. We believe that the public order offences of riot and violent disorder and affray require the use or threat of unlawful violence and conduct which could cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety. Those elements may be present in a mutiny, but that is not necessarily the case. They might apply to some but not all of the mutineers. That is why we have chosen a different formulation made up not of these but of other elements which I mentioned at the start of the debate. I hope that when she reads my remarks in Hansard, the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, will be satisfied. If that is not the case, I am sure that she will table what she considers to be a satisfactory amendment at the next stage of the Bill.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, for generally supporting Clause 2 of the Bill. Both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, referred to the sentence of 10 years. It is important to remember that 10 years is the maximum sentence. The judge who will conduct a trial will consider any mitigating circumstances. That brings me to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, as regards prisoners who are engaged in an ordinary line of crime, as it were, rather than terrorism. The noble Lord referred to the case of a mother providing refuge to a son who may have stolen a motor car. I am sure that case would be covered by the concept of mitigating circumstances in regard to the period of 10 years.

The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, also said he was pleased we had not extended the realm of this piece of legislation to Northern Ireland. I am particularly grateful to hear that in view of the extensive ministerial experience the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has had in Northern Ireland. His remarks were the high point of my day.

It appears to me that the Public Order Act provokes far more disagreement than the Bill we are discussing. The advantage of this Bill is that specific acts of violence do not have to be proved against individual prisoners. It catches instigators who are not at the forefront of the action. Those are areas that are not covered under present legislation. We believe those provisions will act as a deterrent.

All noble Lords who have spoken today drew attention to the recommendations made by Lord Justice Woolf. Noble Lords also said the Government had not gone far enough and this was a small and paltry piece of legislation when compared with what the Government should be doing. However, we believe this Bill is part of a comprehensive response to the 1990 disturbances. The White Paper indicates that our response is not limited to the many constructive suggestions made by Lord Justice Woolf. I am sure all noble Lords are aware that if we tried to provide a conclusive piece of legislation, we would have to produce a document that would probably weigh heavily on our hands.

The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, asked whether prison governors had responded to the Bill. In last September's White Paper we invited comments on this matter. The text of the Bill has been available since November but the Prison Governors Association has not yet told us what it thinks of the Bill.

Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge

My Lords, that means that we can rely on the information of my honourable friend Mr. Maclennan that the association disagrees with it.

Lord Hesketh

My Lords, I can only rely on the information which I have to hand. That rather conflicts with the information of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge.

My noble friend Lord Auckland referred to the speed at which it is intended to introduce the carrying out of prosecutions. I noted on a piece of paper that my response would be that I would bring his comments to the attention of my right honourable friend. Having received rather better advice, I shall draw his comments to the attention of my noble friend the Lord Chancellor so that he is aware of my noble friend's anxieties.

I shall read Hansard carefully and if I have not covered certain points, I shall respond to noble Lords by way of written communication in order to clarify any matters which have not been satisfactorily covered. We believe that the Bill forms part of a balanced package of reform. Our general aim is to improve both security and control on the one hand and the regimes and conditions in our prisons on the other. In that context, we are seeking to provide a more effective means of dealing with prisoners who destroy prisons and also to deter them from such behaviour in future. We believe that the Prison Security Bill will make a contribution to that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, suggested that only my right honourable friend the Home Secretary and I would believe that this Bill has the value which we think it has. I received some support from my noble friend Lord Auckland and I believe that noble Lords will give to the Bill careful and close scrutiny in Committee. I look forward to resuming our discussions at that time. I commend the Bill to the House.

On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.