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Lord Borrie: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, in the most serious cases to which this Question refers, loans are being given that are doomed from the
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Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, my noble friend speaks with considerable authority on this area. I have already emphasised that we are all too well aware of the dangers, particularly on sale and rent-back arrangements that can precipitate problems for individuals. We are tightening up the regulatory regime; my noble friend will also be aware that we now have additional powers on, for example, the control of advertising. That is one way in which we can help to control this problem.
Lord Newby: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one category of loans doomed to fail from the start is that where the loan value, from the outset, is significantly greater than the value of the house? Will he therefore, through the Chancellor, instruct the current management of Northern Rock to stop offering its Together loan? I was enthusiastically offered one of those on Friday evening; it still offers 125 per cent of the value of the house to people who ring up and require a mortgage.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, Northern Rock is a private company that takes private decisions at this stage. Government anxieties about Northern Rock are acute, and it will be important to take action in the very near future. We hope that that action will be along the lines that the Government have always advocated.
Lord Higgins: My Lords, in the light of that point, will the Minister place in the Library what evidence the Government have that the assets of Northern Rock exceed the value of the loans that the Government have arranged to advance to it?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, those are the figures of a private organisation, and I should have thought that the noble Lord would have recognised that it is public that Northern Rock is owed a hundred billion pounds’ worth of mortgages and that the amount lent from the Treasury is a fraction of that. Of course, none of us denies that Northern Rock is in crisis, and the noble Lord has found a deft way to emphasise its difficulties. He will be aware that the Government are strenuously employed in finding a solution to its problems.
Lord Mawhinney: My Lords, the Minister has just told us that in his view the regulatory regime is inadequate. For how long has that been the Government’s view?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the regulatory regime to which I referred is the examination that the Financial Services Authority promised to carry out in the summer of last year regarding its powers. It has promised to report in the first quarter of this year; it intends to do so and thus identify where the regulatory regime position needs to be strengthened.
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Prisoners: Rehabilitation
2.59 pm
Lord Dearing asked Her Majesty’s Government:
Whether they have any plans to increase the resources committed to the rehabilitation of life prisoners who have served more than their tariff.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, all life-sentence prisoners should have a sentence plan that includes appropriate interventions to promote rehabilitation, including where their tariffs have expired. In negotiating service-level agreements with prisons, regional offender managers will need to take this into account when allocating resources.
Lord Dearing: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. My Question derived from the experience of a man who was convicted of murder at the age of about 20 and given a tariff of 15 years. He has now been in prison for 27 years, consistently denying the offence. I understand that the rehabilitation of such long-term prisoners is based very much on acceptance of their guilt. Does the Minister accept that rehabilitation needs to be aimed especially at those who, like the man I mentioned, deny their guilt? Secondly, does the Minister accept that, with more lifers in British prisons than in the whole of France, Germany, Russia and Turkey combined, the very high levels of recidivism among prisoners and the Government’s need to double their planned expenditure on prisons to £2.5 billion to accommodate an extra 10,000 prisoners, we have an urgent need to review the amount of money that we are spending on the successful rehabilitation of prisoners so that they become good citizens rather than stay in prisons?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, the noble Lord raises some profound questions about prison policy. The release of prisoners such as the ones he mentions is a matter for the Parole Board and is done on the basis of risk of harm.
On access to programmes for people who deny their offence, some offender management programmes will not be suitable because they are concerned with discussions about the offence itself, but other educational and training programmes are available, and people who have denied their offence are regularly released by the Parole Board.
On the noble Lord’s general question, we are due to debate that. The Government believe that they are on track, that they have the right programme and that prison is and should be available for the most serious offences but that community sentences should be used for other offenders.
Lord Henley: My Lords, the Government are cutting prison funding next year by some 3 per cent. How on earth will that improve the ability of the Prison Service to do its job?
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, the Ministry of Justice itself will see a 1.7 per cent reduction per year in real terms over the next CSR period. There is indicative funding for the National Offender Management Service, from which the Prison Service is funded, of a 2.5 per cent cash increase per annum over the CSR period. Extra resources will be made available for the expansion of prison programmes. I do not deny that this is a challenging budget, but we will do everything that we can to ensure that the kind of programmes to which the noble Lord has referred will remain funded in the future. It is worth making the point that, in the past few years, we have seen a considerable expansion in those offender management programmes.
Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, in 1999, I published, as Chief Inspector of Prisons, a report on lifers. It contained figures produced by the then Lord Chief Justice that showed that 60 per cent of all lifers were exceeding their tariff by at least a year before being released. That is not to say that they should all be released but, hidden among this, in addition to those in denial, were a large number of people who never got into any programmes. The administration in the service for seeing them out was inefficient. Will the Minister say what the percentage is now? Surely in times of heavy overcrowding, you want to get rid of the people who should not be there, including the people who are of no risk and with a tariff that has expired.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I do not have hard figures available, although I fully understand the noble Lord’s point. I am not aware of lifers with problems getting on accredited offender behaviour management programmes, but we will continue to keep this matter very much under review. It is worth making the point that there has been very encouraging progress in increasing the number of programmes available.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My Lords, despite the pressure on resources, are there any plans in the next year to increase the number of Parole Board places? In light of the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, does the Minister concede that offending behaviour courses should be available in all prisons where people serving life sentences are housed?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, on the second point, it is very important that the allocation of prisoners is done flexibly to make sure that the programmes to which the noble Baroness has referred are available. That is part of the changes and developments that have now taken place in the Prison Service. As far as the Parole Board is concerned, there have been issues around oral hearings, a significant percentage of which have had to be deferred for one reason or another. We are very concerned to see that those difficulties are ironed out. A current National Audit Office study is looking at this matter and we will take that forward with a great deal of enthusiasm.
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Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate: My Lords, in considering these important and complex matters, does the Minister agree that underlying all these decisions should be the protection of the innocent public?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I could not agree more with my noble friend. There has been an increase in prison population, but part of that is because more offenders have been brought to justice. The aim of my department is to ensure that prison is available for those serious offenders who ought to be in prison. The other side of the policy is to encourage the use of community sentences, which can be hard sentences but none the less do not require the use of prison. We are getting the balance right at the same time as crime levels are coming down.
Lord Monson: My Lords, if an individual is kept in prison for longer than the period that the trial judge deemed appropriate for the crime originally committed, he is, in effect, being punished no longer for what he has done in the past but for what it is feared he might do in the future. In other words, he is being kept in preventive detention in all but name. That being the case, should he not be granted as many privileges as possible, provided that security, as the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie pointed out, is not jeopardised?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: No, my Lords. The release post-tariff of prisoners serving life sentences is a question for the Parole Board, as it must be. Its decisions are taken on the basis of its assessment of the risk. As far as indeterminate prison sentences are concerned, there is concern about those short-term sentences where the kind of programmes that noble Lords have mentioned are not yet available. We are putting our energies into that area at the moment.
Local Transport Bill [HL]
3.07 pm
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, that the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clauses 1 to 7Schedule 1Clauses 8 to 40Schedule 2Clause 41Schedule 3Clauses 42 to 67Schedule 4Clauses 68 to 97Schedule 5Clauses 98 to 109Schedule 6Clauses 110 to 115Schedule 7Clauses 116 to 119.—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)On Question, Motion agreed to.
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Climate Change Bill [HL]
3.08 pm
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD SPEAKER in the Chair.]
Clause 26 [The Committee on Climate Change]:
Lord Taylor of Holbeach moved Amendment No. 121:
The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 122. We now turn to Part 2 and look in more detail at the structure, role and functions of the Committee on Climate Change. Much of our discussions on the Bill have concerned that key body created by the Bill, the Committee on Climate Change. In particular, there has been much discussion and debate on how it will fit in with the roles of government and Parliament. I think that Members of the Committee will agree that there has been widespread acknowledgement of how important it will be to get right the triangular balance between the Secretary of State, who will represent the Government, Parliament, which will represent the people, and the committee, which will represent science and expertise.
There have been differences. The Minister, while taking much of our argument, has been cautious in conceding executive power to the committee, although as the Bill has progressed through the Committee stage, he has acknowledged that much determination of the targets and budgets will rest with the committee. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has expressed concern that the committee should not become politicised. We in the Opposition agree with him. However, we see that the success of this legislation is very much dependent on getting the role of the committee right. We have pointed out repeatedly that the Bill too frequently draws back from putting the committee centre stage, as we believe it must. In this we have been widely supported by noble Lords from all sides of the House who were involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill through the Joint Committee of both Houses.
We have been saying since Second Reading that the Committee on Climate Change needs to be beefed up in its role. I was pleased to hear that this view has widespread support across the House. We have also emphasised—and again I believe this is a shared objective of all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate—that the committee needs to be independent, authoritative and expert. Its activities need to be based on the science of the issue and its decisions need to reflect the science on which they are based. My vision is that in this way it will be a more effective and useful partner to the Government and Parliament in achieving the success of this legislation. I have frequently drawn
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For this reason we have tabled these two amendments which change the name of the committee to reflect its role and functions, to reinforce its status and authority, and to proclaim its independence. The change would create the Commission on Climate Change, which we believe is a more appropriate name for the body. The name “committee” applies to a body set up to undertake a function and which receives its authority from an existing body. For example, we are sitting here as a committee by virtue of the fact that we have had the business of the House committed to us. Similarly, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, a body performing functions comparable in importance with the Committee on Climate Change, is rightly so called because it is constituted by the higher authority vested in the Bank. Though the importance may be similar, its status is different. A commission is a task or a duty derived directly from the authority of the Crown or statute. Thus it is exactly the right term for our purposes in this Bill. It reflects the role and function, status and authority, and independence of this key body.
This change is not mere semantics and it is certainly not cosmetic. It would give its members the status of commissioners and create a public sense that this is not just an exclusively advisory body. To this end we move this amendment. It will in a very real way ensure that the Government and Parliament can draw on the strength and authority of the body they have created to assist them in stopping climate change. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours: I support this amendment because it takes forward a discussion in which I have participated on two previous occasions. I refer to the whole question of the triangular balance between the three organisations to which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, referred.
At the weekend I watched our debates last week on the Parliament channel, in particular a debate held on the second day in Committee that I missed when I went for a cup of tea. In that debate the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, argued that he was passionately against the principle that the committee should be given the additional powers for which the Conservative Front Bench and I have been arguing. I have had time to reflect on his words and I understand perfectly where he is coming from. In the light of that speech, I have tried to work out another structure that might meet the concerns felt by some noble Lords on both sides of the Committee about the nature of this relationship.
3.15 pm
My mind went back to the period between 1981 and 1990 when I was a member of the Public Accounts Committee in the House of Commons. I considered the nature of the relationship between the accounting officers of departments of state—the Permanent Secretaries—and the National Audit Office. In those conditions, reports coming before the Public Accounts
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