HL Deb 09 March 1992 vol 536 cc1206-10

5.14 p.m.

Read a third time.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers)

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass.

Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Earl Ferrers.)

Baroness Ewart-Biggs

My Lords, this is a moment when, if we are lucky, we can congratulate the Minister on taking a useful Bill through the House and, perhaps, congratulate ourselves, on having persuaded him to make a few changes which might have improved the Bill; but we can do neither in the case of this Bill. One of the high points was when the noble Lord, Lord Hesketh, vacated his lofty place as Chief Whip and descended to the Front Bench to introduce the Bill. He did so most effectively, and we are grateful to him for doing that. He has since been replaced by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, who, with his usual courtesy, explained in Committee the Bill's provisions and the reasons why our amendments were inappropriate.

I shall repeat briefly what was said by several noble Lords during the debate on the gracious Speech and on Second Reading. They asked why the Government had produced legislation which no one felt was necessary and which no one wanted. Having rightly asked Lord Justice Woolf to set up an inquiry following last year's prison disorders, they wanted to know why the Government had implemented a measure that he did not recommend. He made 204 recommendations, but did not recommend—nor did Judge Stephen Tumim—the creation of the offence of prison mutiny. The Prison Reform Group, NACRO, the Prison Governors' Association and the Prison Officers' Association agreed. The POA said that the new legislation might well prove a hindrance rather than a help in prison control. What could be more damning than that? The very people responsible for the day-to-day care and control of prisoners find the Bill at best ineffectual and at worst a hindrance. They know that prisoners involved in violence, damage and disorder can already be charged with a wide range of criminal charges. If the severe penalties available for existing offences do not deter rioters, nor will a new offence.

We were also disappointed that amendments that we tabled in Committee, and that we hoped would mitigate the Bill's worst effects, were not accepted. We felt that the Bill in its present form might catch prisoners who are not the perpetrators of the kind of problems we saw at Strangeways or the riots that took place in several of our prisons last year.

Today I went to the Butler Trust awards. The trust, as the Minister knows, is an excellent organisation that rewards those who work in the prison system for exceptional work done within the prison service. I therefore had the opportunity to speak to many people involved in the penal system. Again, there was fear that the Bill would catch inadequate prisoners who might be caught on the fringe of a riot or mutiny but would do nothing to catch those at the centre of trouble in prisons. If they cannot be caught under the existing law, it was felt that the provisions of the Bill would be unlikely to catch them.

There is only one conclusion we can draw; namely, that the Bill is largely cosmetic and one that the Government can use as part of a prison public relations exercise. The Government wish to be seen to be doing something about prison disturbances but lack the courage and inclination to follow the recommendations of the Woolf Report, which go to the heart of the problem: remedying the causes of prison disturbances and riots by improving prison conditions and ending overcrowding. That is the way in which we could get to the root causes of rioting: by trying to improve the conditions in which prison officers can operate and prisoners live.

Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge

My Lords, we have spent long enough on this unsatisfactory Bill. My noble friend on the Labour Front Bench said everything that I wish to say except for one point. I hope that one aspect of the Bill will never be operated—the prosecution for mutiny of prisoners who have shown no violence nor threat of violence. I believe it to be quite impossible to prosecute for that offence with justice. Having said that, I thank the noble Earl for his courtesy, as always, and hope that next time we meet it will he on a more interesting subject.

Earl Ferrers

My Lords, I hope that I shall have the pleasure of meeting the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, in the near future on a more interesting matter than this. I am sure I shall. I was going to say that I was grateful to him for what he said, but I was not particularly grateful. He was not complimentary about the Bill, nor was the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs. When she began her speech I thought that she would be complimentary so I became excited, but then she was not.

One remark she made was a compliment. She said that she was grateful to my noble friend the Chief Whip for taking the Second Reading of the Bill when I was unavoidably detained. I, too, was grateful to him for that.

The noble Baroness made one fairly pertinent remark. She asked why on earth we wanted to introduce a Bill which nobody believed was necessary. The fact is that some people believe it is necessary. We saw the most appalling riots and disturbances in prisons, which were quite unacceptable. I do not believe it is right for any government to see that happen and the damage that occurred without being prepared to consider whether it is right or possible to take action to stop it happening in future.

After all, prisons are institutions for the public benefit. They are kept and looked after correctly. When they are destroyed, with great respect to the noble Baroness, I do not believe it is good enough for her to say that we need better prisons and better conditions and that that will prevent rioting. Perhaps it will. A great deal is being done towards that, but in itself it is no excuse or reason to say that we should not take other measures to prevent such rioting.

The existing law has clearly failed to deter prisoners from attempting to wreck our prisons. Something is needed to bring home to them the consequences of their conduct. In the Bill we do not seek to criminalise demonstrations about food or lack of time for visits or the many other matters about which prisoners complain or protest. If demonstrations of that kind are in breach of prison discipline, governors will have powers to adjudicate and, in appropriate cases, to award a disciplinary penalty such as loss of remission.

What we are discussing is not a protest about stale bread but something infinitely more serious. It is conduct which is intended to make a prison or part of a prison ungovernable, whether or not that conduct involves violence, criminal damage or anything else which constitutes an offence under the Public Order Act.

I do not believe that it is right that any inmate or collection of inmates of a prison should try to take the law into their own hands yet again and make the prison ungovernable. We are talking about the kind of conduct for which the maximum disciplinary penalty of one month's loss of remission would obviously be inadequate. The Bill would not lead to all those found guilty of prison mutiny being sentenced to periods of 10 years' imprisonment—the maximum penalty. The courts have more than enough experience in matching penalties to the seriousness of the offence.

The noble Baroness referred to the Prison Officers' Association. It has given us no inkling of its views on the Bill and if it is opposed to the legislation, I should have expected it to tell us. It was suggested that prison governors did not like the Bill, but the Prison Governors' Association has not suggested to us that it is opposed to the Bill. Its secretary has sent us a copy of comments which he made earlier to Mr. Robert Maclennan to which that honourable gentleman referred in another place. The comments were confined to a number of specific points. The first point was that the association considered the penalty of 10 years on conviction of mutiny to be too high. I explained in Committee that this is a maximum rather than a mandatory penalty. Secondly, the association thought that the Bill as originally drafted would encompass relatively minor disturbances. Of course, your Lordships will know that that provision no longer stands.

Thirdly, the association believed that the penalty for the offences would not deter those who were serving life sentences. But even if that were so, the criticism could be levelled at the penalty for any criminal offence committed in prison. Even life sentence prisoners may expect to be released some day. Their conviction for prison mutiny would significantly set back the date of their release.

Fourthly, the association had a range of anxieties about the decision to remove boards of visitors from the disciplinary system from April of this year and about the way in which the courts would deal with offences committed by prisoners. That is outside the scope of the Bill.

That is the kind of evidence that we have received. I do not believe that one could conclude from it that the Prison Governors' Association is, as the noble Baroness suggested, opposed in principle to the Bill. I should be surprised if it were, because the Bill is designed to make life easier for the association's members.

I realise that the noble Baroness, Lady EwartBiggs, and the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, do not find themselves enamoured of the Bill, but I hope that they will realise and understand the reasons for which it was introduced. The fact is that where prisoners create mutiny in prisons, it is intolerable that they or a collection of prisoners should make the prisons ungovernable. That is why the Bill was introduced. I hope that your Lordships will agree that the Bill do now pass. I commend it to your Lordships.

On Question, Bill passed.