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Lord Dholakia: My Lords, I am delighted to respond to Her Majesty's gracious Speech from this part of your Lordships' House. I thank the Minister for her introductory speech. I shall concentrate on home affairs, and I must say straightaway that it is refreshing to be back on the Front Bench. It seems that not much has changed in the short time that I have been away on other duties.

The long list of Home Office-related Bills and draft Bills set out in the Queen's Speech includes some welcome and genuinely useful measures to reduce crime and reoffending, alongside other measures that
 
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reveal the Government's blind spot with regard to the importance of maintaining civil liberties. It is unfortunate that the Government have chosen to waste parliamentary time by introducing a long series of measures, most of which have little chance of making the statute book, if there is to be a May general election. It would have been preferable to concentrate the available parliamentary time on a smaller number of useful measures that could gain all-party support.

The political debates of the past few weeks are a good indication that the Government still have an insatiable appetite for prescribing instant solutions to crime and problems in dealing with offenders. There is serious concern among our judiciary that previous legislation passed by the Government has not had a chance to bed down. There is still inadequate research about the impact of legislation previously enacted. The question that we must pose is why, if the Government's strategy is working, we now have the highest recorded prison population for men, women and children.

We have now the eighth annual programme of legislation. On every previous occasion, we were told that the relevant measures would be effective in tackling crime and criminality. Yet, we get more and more of the same every year. That may make the voters feel that the Home Office is tackling public concerns. However, it is obvious that many of the previous legislative measures have simply not worked. I am afraid that we may be looking for easy solutions to complex social problems.

Crime and criminality have a lot to do with social exclusion, which is often reflected by factors such as unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, poor education, poor housing, high crime, family breakdown and poor mental and physical health. Those of us who have sat in the magistrates' courts have identified those factors in the reports that we have received.

We have to accept that these are challenging times for our criminal justice system. The Government's commitment to make law and order a primary plank in their political platform for this Session of Parliament is bound to raise the profile of our criminal justice system still further. If we are to meet the challenges, we need to think innovatively about the means to secure the highest standards of efficiency, coherence and accountability, while protecting the essential values of fairness, discretion and independence.

It is even more important to ensure that, by enacting legislation, we are not sacrificing the rights and liberties of our citizens. Is it not a shame that our country, renowned for its judiciary and its laws, is being criticised by the United Nations for the way in which detainees in Belmarsh are being dealt with?

Our judicial system is the envy of the world. It is at the heart of our democracy. It is followed by many emerging and developing countries. What messages are we giving to them? Plans to put terrorist suspects on trial without a jury abandon the fundamental principles of the justice system. Moreover, it undermines public confidence in it. Those are not my words, but the words of the Government's chief prosecutor.
 
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My noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby and I visited the Human Rights Commission in India last week. That country has known what terrorism is all about. Yet, its chairman was adamant that rights and liberties would not be sacrificed in dealing with terrorism and the threat of terrorism.

Some government measures reflect posturing rather than policy; for example, the completely otiose plan to make it an aggravating factor in sentencing for drug dealers to use children as couriers or to sell drugs outside schools. I do not know any court that would fail to regard those things as aggravating factors. Legislating to do something that invariably happens already may make good election-related headlines, but it is difficult to regard it as serious policy making.

There are other measures for which no adequate explanation is available. We are told that identity cards are essential in tackling terrorism and illegal immigration. That is how the debate started. But in July 2000 David Blunkett said that,

He continued:

Then there is an about turn by David Blunkett. In summer 2004, he said that an ID card would make a significant contribution to tackling terrorism.

It will do nothing of the sort. We are opposed to compulsory identity cards. The scheme is likely to become yet another expensive government ID failure because it relies on untested new technology. It is unlikely to achieve its stated objectives of tackling illegal immigration, terrorism and fraud.

There is a serious risk that it will lead to further discrimination against ethnic minorities who are already being disproportionately targeted under terrorism and illegal immigration operations. The impact of stop-and-search procedures on our Muslim community has been disproportionate. The cost is likely to be in excess of £3 billion, yet there has been no proper analysis of its cost-effectiveness.

Did the public know about the costing and its effectiveness when questions were put asking for their support? The savings made from not proceeding with the scheme would be better spent on more police on our streets. We have been warned by the chief police officers that they are facing a £350 million shortfall for fighting crime next year.

However, all in the Queen's Speech is not bad. First, I shall refer to a number of worthwhile measures which deserve, and will receive, our support. Legislation to outlaw incitement to religious hatred is welcome. There is no logic in a position where inciting hatred against a minority group because they are black or Asian is an offence, but inciting hatred against them because they are Muslims is not. Although the offence
 
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will protect members of all religious faiths, it is particularly important at a time of increasing Islamophobia.

There are serious issues to be discussed and addressed. I shall be delighted to offer the help of my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill to take that matter further. A measure likely to be promoted by the DTI about a draft corporate manslaughter Bill will obviously be dealt with by my noble friend Lord Goodhart.

I welcome the proposed youth justice Bill, which will contain greater restrictions on the use of custody and measures to increase the credibility of community sentences for young offenders. The proposal to restrict detention and training orders to young people who have previously received an intensive supervision and surveillance programme is particularly welcome.

I must declare an interest as president of NACRO, which runs some excellent intensive supervision and surveillance programmes. These programmes are keeping some prolific young offenders—for whom other community sentences and short custodial sentences have failed—away from further crime through intensive education and mentoring, combined with restrictions enforced by electronic monitoring. It cannot be right to send a young person into custody before a programme such as that has been tried.

There must also be a clear recognition that faced with the highest ever prison population we must have the courage to explore tough but effective community alternatives. It is right that the intensive community sentences that have been shown to work with under-18s should be extended to older age groups. Strict supervision in the community is not a soft option for many offenders. A well executed rehabilitation programme involving mentors and specially designed courses can put order back in a young life and help to reduce crime in the community.

We also strongly support much of the Government's drug strategy that will form the content of the drugs Bill. In particular, we strongly support measures to increase the number of drug-addicted offenders who receive drug rehabilitation and treatment programmes. According to recent research by South Bank University, those programmes reduce the number of crimes committed by offenders who enter treatment by around 70 per cent. That is a phenomenal reduction in the number of burglaries, thefts, street robberies and offences of selling drugs carried out by such offenders to feed their habits.

We remain unconvinced of the need to move to a single correctional service at this stage. There are strong arguments for better co-ordination between the Prison Service and the probation service, especially in the light of the new custody plus sentences due to start in 2006, which comprise of a period of custody followed by a longer period under supervision in the community. However, the plans for NOMS are vague, poorly thought out and threaten to put more pressure on the probation service, which is already in a state of crisis.
 
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We have set out our "payback not layback" proposals which aim to keep non-violent offenders out of prison wherever possible, giving them tough community sentences instead. Properly implemented, community sentences can seriously challenge offending behaviour, making offenders repay their victims and meet the needs of the community that they have harmed. That is a visibly tougher sentencing option than prison.

However, the new service stands a realistic chance of achieving its aims only if it is properly resourced, introduced in a way that engages the support of members of both services and makes maximum use of partnerships with voluntary agencies.

So far I have referred to measures that have some merit, at least in principle. Unfortunately, too many measures in the Queen's Speech do not have merit because they disproportionately affect and attack civil liberties. The extension of powers of arrest to all suspected offences, however minor, is a breathtakingly disproportionate approach that fails to maintain any reasonable balance between the rights of citizens and the powers of the police. The Government assure us that in practice those powers will not be misused.

But all our experience shows that powers of a very wide discretionary nature can sometimes be abused by over-zealous law enforcers. It shows us too that they are often used disproportionately against people from minority ethnic groups.

The Government are also proposing a power to test people compulsorily for drugs on arrest rather than charge. It surely cannot be right to subject people to such an intrusive and invasive procedure before the police have concluded that there is sufficient prima facie evidence to charge them with an offence. I am frankly astonished that the Government cannot see how draconian and unbalanced those approaches seem to many people who strongly support any reasonable measure to tackle crime and deal with offenders more effectively.

In conclusion, there is a danger than an approach based simply on "being tough" is counter productive. We must remember that it is not so much what the law or declaration specifically says as the general underlying attitudes and values it is held to express that are of importance for social well being. Of course, the interests of the law-abiding community have to be protected. But civil rights and civil liberties are an essential element of our judicial system. They sustain our democratic values. We dilute these at our peril.

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