With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I beg leave to present a petition on a matter of grave importance not only to my constituents and my country but to mankind in all continents of the world.

Led by Father Cowan, a peace group from the Catholic Church in Willesden, assisted by members of the Methodist Church in Harlesden, collected 1,241 signatures in less than a fortnight.

The petition sheweth

That the world is now entering a very critical stage, with immense economic, trade, ecological, environmental, military and survival problems, which if not attended to immediately, will cause the collapse of both the rich and the poor countries of the world by the year 2000;

That the money, energy, brain-power, time and resources spent at present on arms on a world-wide scale, if diverted and used intelligently, could save our world and make it a better place to live in, these being some of the recommendations of the Brandt report, "North-South: A Programme for Survival."

Wherefore your petitioners pray that your House and Britain, with her great reputation for diplomacy in international affairs, take the initiative to

(1) negotiate with all the countries of North-South for the scaling down and eventual removal of all weapons, nuclear, chemical, etc., which threaten the existence of our world; and at the same time

(2) negotiate with these same countries for the survival of our world by providing the necessary trade, aid, trust and other links to guarantee this survival. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.

This petition is the voice of ordinary folk speaking on behalf of the poor and humble throughout the world, irrespective of race, colour or creed. It is not too late for the powerful and mighty to listen and to act.

I beg leave to present the petition.

The debate gives the House an opportunity to discuss not only the May committee's report and the action which we within the Home Office have taken in implementing its various recommendations, but the report of the parliamentary all-party penal affairs group, "Too Many Prisoners", and the Government's observations on the fifteenth report from the Expenditure Committee. At some point my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland will intervene on the Scottish aspects, which are separate.

The central problem facing the prison service today is the sheer size of the prison population. When the May report was published last October the prison population in England and Wales was about 42,500. Earlier this year it rose to a peak of 44,800. The most recent figure I can give is 44,324 on 18 July.

This total is quite plainly very high—and dangerously so. Most significantly, the local prisons, where overcrowding is most severe, had 17,357 inmates against certified normal accommodation of 11,657. Throughout the prison system 11,342 inmates were sharing two to a cell and 5,694 three to a cell on 13 July. The effect of these statistics on the prison service cannot be viewed in isolation. Our prison system forms a vital part of the criminal justice system. A crisis in our prisons is, by definition, a crisis for the police, the courts and the probation and after-care service.

It is, therefore, essential to the well-being of the criminal justice system as a whole that the severe pressure on the prison system should be relieved. Our plans to do so have two broad targets. First, we shall increase the capacity and efficiency of the prison service through new building, through improvements in organisation, management and industrial relations, and through better use of manpower. Secondly, we shall take measures designed to reduce the size of the prison population.

Most of the improvements which we can bring about in the prison service itself will take time. Some must take a very long time. The problems were set out by the May committee in stark relief—a decaying prison estate, the poor working and living conditions for staff and prisoners, the decline in the belief that imprisonment can have a positive effect and the deterioration in industrial relations. Even if, overnight, there were a substantial reduction in the prison population, these problems would remain to be tackled. I believe that, in its first response to the report of the May committee, the Government have acknowledged this as well as demonstrating their commitment to support and improve the prison system.

We have already taken decisions on some of the May committee's most important recommendations. We accepted immediately the committee's recomdations on pay for the prison service. I announced in my statement to the House on 30 April a far-reaching reorganisation of the prison department designed to achieve the objective set by the May committee of enhancing its status and identity within the Home Office. That reorganisation is essentially complete only nine months after the publication of the May report. Subject to the overriding need to preserve direct ministerial accountability for the prison system, it will give the prison department, as the May committee urged, more freedom to manage its own staff and control its own finance. I also announced in my statement the Government's acceptance of the May committee's recommendations for an inspectorate of prisons separate from the prison department.

I am today able to announce the appointment of Mr. William Pearce, at present chief probation officer for the inner London probation and after-care service, as Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons. Mr. Pearce has had a most distinguished career in the probation service, and has an international reputation. He will take up his post full time on 1 January 1981.

The Government's decisions on the reorganisation of the prison service have, I believe, been welcomed in the House, but reorganisation is only a beginning. We must, during the next few years, work steadily at all the problems exposed by the May committee. We must improve the conditions in our prisons for both staff and prisoners, especially where they are at their worst. We must take up the committee's concept of positive custody and give new impetus to the management of regimes in prisons and the development of prison industries. We must do whatever we can to avoid the necessity for prisoners, particularly in our local prisons, to be locked in the cells for so long each day.

If we are to do so, we must ensure that our staff are used as efficiently as possible. It is our task, in partnership with the unions, to release the energy and imagination in the prison service for its primary purpose—the control and care of prisoners. If we can do so, it will not only make a vital contribution to improving the conditions in our prisons but also enable staff to play the more fulfilling role to which they aspire. We have made a start. I welcome the constructive discussions which have begun with the Prison Officers Association on a new attendance system to replace the complicated systems criticised by the May committee. I hope that these discussions, together with those on improvements in procedures for handling industrial relations, will be successful.

I hope that we shall see the first fruits of these developments within the next two or three years. But what of the mid-1980s and beyond? First and foremost, as the May committee argued so eloquently, we must improve the prison estate. The committee criticised some of the conditions it saw as "against nature". So they are. Such conditions are the legacy of decades of neglect. They cannot be changed overnight. The Government, however, have a substantial building programme. Frankland, a major new dispersal prison, with over 400 places, will open next year. Firm plans have been made for four major new projects to begin by April 1983, including two new young offender establishments at Stocken and Appleton Thorn. We shall continue the programme of two starts a year into 1983-84 with category B prisons at Swaleside and Carrbrook. This programme, including places under construction and the new projects I have mentioned, should produce a total of 6,400 new places by the end of the decade. We are also undertaking an enhanced programme of maintenance and improvement.

I am aware that it has been argued that the need to reduce the prison population is such that we should not build new prisons. The May committee rejected this argument. So do I. As the committee made clear, the fabric of much of the prison estate is decrepit; some of it is literally falling down. A considerable and enlarged effort is needed simply to maintain standards of physical accommodation at their present level.

Has the right hon. Gentleman plans to close any prisons?

Certainly not at present. The pressures on the prison system make clear that this would foe an impossible task, at least in the years immediately ahead.

rose—

I should like to say, before giving way to the hon. Gentleman, that I want to allow as many hon. Members as possible to speak. The more I give way, the fewer will have that chance.

I am grateful. Does not the Home Secretary's answer undermine his argument? If we are trying to replace bad fabric by building new prisons but still to continue with the prisons that have the bad fabric, have we done anything at all to diminish the problem?

Basically, we must maintain the prisons that we possess. That is why I have announced that we are determined to have an enhanced programme of maintenance and improvement. At the same time, we need all the existing places, and we need more places. The real answer is a considerable and enlarged effort simply to maintain standards of physical accommodation at the present level. The reduction in the prison population and the building programme are not alternatives. In my judgment, we need both. That is my genuine answer to the hon. Gentleman. It has the merit that I have been able to proceed with my speech because those were the next two sentences in it.

Increasing the capacity and the efficiency of the prison service is one way in which we hope to relieve some of the pressure on the system. These measures are not enough in themselves. Unless we can also arrest the seemingly inexorable rise in the prison population, the prison system will reach bursting point.

Successive Governments have sought to limit the growth in the prison population by providing the courts with a full range of alternatives to custody. This country can be proud of its record in extending the type of non-custodial penalties available to the courts. There have been some notable success stories. Community service, in particular, has developed rapidly into an effective means of dealing with some offenders. Community service was introduced by the last Conservative Government in 1973, and this one will give its development every encouragement.

This country led the world in the development of the probation service, and the part it has played, with the assistance of the voluntary sector, in the provision of alternatives to custody in recent years is an impressive one. Nevertheless, there is still scope for further effort in this direction. In particular, there is a need for an increased use of probation and supervision orders by the courts for some of those who are currently being imprisoned. I welcome the initiative taken by the Central Council of Probation and After-Care Committees in bringing together all those concerned, in particular the magistrates, the justices' clerks and the probation service, to this end.

The record of the probation service in containing persons under supervision is impressive. In 1978, for instance, some four out of five probation orders terminated normally or early for good progress. The Government for their part have agreed to make additional resources available for the probation service, and only by a joint effort can the full potential of the probation service be achieved.

The Government also believe that attendance centres are an important alternative to custody. We think that this is true for girls as well as boys; and for young men of 17 to 20 as well as for those under 17. Accordingly, since we took office, we have opened 17 new centres in different parts of England and Wales, with a further eight expected before the end of the year. Of the new centres, three are for girls. Plans are in hand for five senior attendance centres, of which two are expected to open shortly.

It is unlikely that non-custodial measures will by themselves solve the problems of the prison service. The evidence of recent years has been that new alternatives to imprisonment tend to some extent to diminish the courts' use of existing ones. It would not be prudent, therefore, to rely alone on significantly greater growth in the use of alternatives to imprisonment to solve the problem of pressure on the prison system.

This is not to say that the Government will not encourage further initiatives in the diversion of offenders from imprisonment where these offer some hope in relation to particular areas of concern. Our reply to the Expenditure Committee makes clear the importance that we attach to the problem of accommodating mentally disordered offenders. We have endorsed the Expenditure Committee's recommendation that the provision of regional secure units should be treated as a matter of great urgency. We intend to promote a better understanding of the problem of menially disordered offenders, both within the National Health Service and in the community as a whole.

Another group of prisoners which gives rise to much concern is the small group of drunken offenders who experience repeated spells of imprisonment in default of fines. I have already announced that we are making public funds available to enable voluntary organisations to make experimental provision for simple overnight accommodation, linked to counselling facilities and the offer of longer-term help, for people who would otherwise be charged with offences of drunkenness. We hope that the first of the new experimental facilities will be operational by the autumn. If these experiments succeed, we hope to extend such centres and to introduce new sources of finance for them.

I warmly welcome the action that my right hon. Friend has taken in regard to drunken offenders. It is certainly a major step to decriminalise the actions of those who unfortunately are sick, socially handicapped and often homeless. Does he accept that there will be no significant results unless the new overnight accommodation is linked with services for rehabilitation? Will he be prepared to initiate discussions straightaway with the appropriate Departments and the voluntary agencies to see how a comprehensive and cost-effective service can be developed?

Yes, most certainly. 1 respond to my hon. Friend by saying that we hope to initiate such discussions. I also want to refer to the sources of finance, which I have already mentioned to my hon. Friend in a recent answer.

The all-party penal affairs group has drawn attention to one possible source of funds for this purpose—the licensing compensation funds. I announced our proposals for winding up these funds in reply to a written question from my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir B. Braine) on 30 July. We propose that 50 per cent. of the amounts now held by the county licensing compensation authorities should be paid to a new charitable trust fund which would be empowered to finance, among other things pioneering schemes for dealing with drunken offenders. However, I must stress that this scheme as a whole will depend on finding a suitable legislative opportunity in which to seek parliamentary approval for the new arrangements. I suspect that such approval could easily be given, because I think that this trust could be of significant help. The funds would be made available, and I hope that it would be possible to make arrangements to that end.

These developments are important in their own right, and we shall make every effort to ensure that they succeed. However, we must recognise that they will have only a limited impact on the total prison population.

In its interim report "The Length of Prison Sentences", the Advisory Council on the Penal System concluded that

"every consideration of penal theory and practice tells us that we should strive to restrict the use of imprisonment even more than we have done in the recent past."

It posed the question

"Are there not cases of two years' imprisonment where 18 months or 15 or even less, might safely be passed, and sentences of 12 months when six months would do just as well?"

It urged all courts to stop at the point where a sentence had been decided upon and consider whether a shorter one would not do just as well. The Conservative Party's general election manifesto took up the same theme. We said that for really violent criminals and thugs really tough sentences were essential. But in other cases long prison terms are not always the best deterrent.

I believe that a strong consensus is developing that shorter prison sentences are both appropriate and desirable. We now know that a longer sentence is most unlikely to aid a prisoner's rehabilitation in any sense, while the initial impact of imprisonment is quite sufficient to make a lasting impression in the minds of most offenders.

The Lord Chief Justice recently said in the Court of Appeal:

"the time has come to appreciate that nonviolent petty offenders should not be allowed to take up what has become valuable space in prison. If there really is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence, then it should be as short as possible."

Of course, it is for the courts to decide the appropriate sentence in each individual case. However, it is the responsibility of the legislature to provide the framework within which individual sentencing decisions are made, and I believe that it is proper for Parliament to expect the courts to take account of its clearly expressed views in so far as they bear on the general tendency of the sentencing decisions which the courts make.

I have said that exceptional measures cannot be ruled out if the situation demands them. Such measures would have to be indiscriminate and across-the-board. This would inevitably disturb the relativities which have been carefully established by the courts over a very considerable period of time. I do not find that an attractive course, nor am I as convinced as some of its powerful advocates that the emergency measures suggested would necessarily succeed in reducing the prison population, except temporarily. Indeed, they could turn out to be counter-productive if the thinking behind them were not accepted by judges and magistrates.

Does not the right hon. Gentleman accept that the most important and significant reduction in the prison population can be achieved by means of reducing the length of sentences? I am glad to hear him confirm the statement that he made, as reported in The Times on 16 July, that if his entreaties to the judiciary were not heard and implemented, parliamentary action would have to follow. Can he now say how long he will give the judiciary to implement shorter sentences? Who is monitoring whether or not shorter sentences are currently being imposed?

I shall not be trapped into saying how long I shall give the judiciary. The hon. Gentleman is an old enough hand to know that he will not trap me—I hope, nearly as old a hand—into giving such an answer. I want to see how this develops. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not take my particular view, but I believe that in the longer term there is a danger of such measures being totally counter-productive. I am entitled to that view, and there are quite a few people who hold it. There is now an unmistakable consensus, to which I am sure today's debate will make an important contribution, about the desirability of shorter prison sentences. I should therefore like to allow time in which we can see whether this can enable a substantial reduction in the prison population to be achieved.

In view of everything that my right hon. Friend has said about shorter prison sentences, does he not agree that it is necessary to inform and reassure the general public that the level of punishment and protection is adequate?

Yes, very much so. That is why to move quickly or suddenly into emergency measures, even if they are necessary, would have considerable drawbacks? That must be faced. I hope that we in this House can get across to the general public that, although longer sentences are inevitable for the protection of the public in crimes of violence and terrorism, there are many other offenders who could benefit from shorter sentences. We must try to get that distinction across to people. I believe that it is possible to do so, and it is up to all hon. Members to try to do so.

Within the prison population as a whole, prisoners on remand give rise to special concern, which has been voiced on many occasions by Members of this House. Particular concern has been expressed about the number of young people in custody, and for this reason a limited amount of new accommodation specifically for unsentenced young prisoners will become available at two of our newest establishments, Glen Parva and Thorp Arch, later this year. The extra places which will be provided by the prison building programme will also provide some welcome relief for the establishments where remand prisoners are held. Quite apart from the prison places occupied by those on remand, hon. Members know how much prison staff time is occupied on court hearings. This problem illustrates once again the interdependence of the different parts of the criminal justice system. Delays in the judicial system inevitably aggravate the already intense pressures on local prisons.

As to the Bail Act itself, differing points of view have been expressed on the outcome of the legislation. The first year of operation of the Act has been monitored, and the results will be published. When they are available it will be possible to have a better-informed public debate on this difficult subject.

I have already indicated today that I do not intend to discuss in detail all the proposals which have been put to me for changes in the working of the penal system. But I wish to stress my appreciation to the all-party penal affairs group for its most important report, and to undertake to give careful consideration to its recommendations.

I should also inform the House that in the autumn we shall publish a White Paper on the sentencing and treatment of young offenders.

Although the internal problems of the prison system naturally tend to occupy a central place in our thinking at present, this will not distract us from our commitment to legislation giving the courts more effective powers of sentencing, principally as regards young adult offenders.

But as this debate will no doubt make clear, our prisons present the greatest challenge within the whole criminal justice system in our society. No one can doubt that too little attention has been paid to our prisons, their staff, and inmates for decades. But in the last Parliament there was a realisation that this attitude had to change. The right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) acted in setting up the May committee. The Expenditure Committee's study and report were further evidence of Parliament's interest.

I would claim that this Government, by acting so quickly and decisively on the May report, have shown that determination in this Parliament to face up to the problems, as has the all-party penal affairs group. We have made a beginning. Success in solving the problems of the prison system will need continued commitment and continued support for this task from all of us.

The Home Secretary struck the right note in his last words by saying that continued effort on our part is needed. The May report and the Expenditure Committee report are of great value, but this is not a once for all job. It must continue all the time.

We are debating the prison system and the report of the May committee. First, I should like to say a word about the May report and then a word about the reduction in the prison population. It is right that the report of the Expenditure Committee, although it is not mentioned on the Order Paper, is very much in our minds. A number of interesting matters are raised there, and the Home Secretary raised a number of matters regarding alternatives to prison. Other right hon. and hon. Members will comment on that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill) will also concentrate on it in her reply.

I should like to bring to the notice of the House the terms of reference of the May report, not as a historical exercise, but because it took a long time to draft them. The terms of reference are divided into two parts, because at the time I was more concerned with the administration of the prisons. It was not that we lacked advice from the Expenditure Committee and other sources about the size of the prison population, but at that time to have undertaken another investigation would have been a mistake. An introductory section sets the scene about the size of the prison population, but may I remind the House of the issues on which the May committee was asked to advise. It was asked to advise on

"the adequacy, availability, management and use of resources in the prison services; the conditions for staff in the prison services and their families"—

there has not been very much investigation of that over the years—

"the organisation and management of the prison services; the structure of the prison services, including complementing and grading; the remuneration and conditions of service of prison officers, governors and other grades … in the prison services … allowances and other aspects of the conditions of service of other grades … working arrangements in the prison services … the effectiveness of the industrial relations machinery."

The members of the committee included experts in the field of industrial relations in industry, a senior officer in the police force who had experience in police pay negotiations, so was able to give dual advice to the committee, a magistrate, and, of course, a representative from Northern Ireland and Scotland, because the report covers the United Kingdom as a whole.

It was my view at the time that, until we had put right the administration of the prisons, penal reform would not be carried out properly. It is not sufficient to have good ideas in this House and in other places if they are unacceptable to those who work in the prisons. They would not get very far, and they would be carried out in the wrong way. I found in the prison service a resentment against this House. It was felt that we were concerned about the prisons but that we were not worried about the staff and their conditions. It was also said that we were not worried about their views or their experience. Also, the continuous duty credit argument showed me that the prison service was out of control.

I, as the man ultimately responsible, was not running the prison service. There was an animosity between different trade unions, between different branches working in the Civil Service. Going back to 1975, before my time as Home Secretary, and even earlier, for long periods—this is chronicled in the May report—prisons were effectively in some essential ways controlled by local branches of the Prison Officers Association. The organisation was such that there was blurred responsibility, despite the best intentions of those within the Civil Service, particularly those with whom I came into contact.

Therefore, whatever happens about non-custodial measures, whatever happens about the size of the prison population and much as this is absolutely basic to what is done in the prisons, I simply tell the House that I was particularly concerned with the industrial relations aspect of the running of the prison service. That had to be put right, because not nearly enough attention had been given to it.

I agree that it is absolutely right to preserve ministerial responsibility for the prison service and for the treatment of individual prisons. Much depends on the junior Minister with day-to-day responsibility. No Home Secretary with a wide variety of responsibilities can concern himself with the prisons on a day-to-day basis. Much, therefore, depends upon the junior Minister who is appointed for that purpose.

The junior Minister needs every opportunity not just to pass minutes to the Secretary of State but to talk with the Secretary of State about the problems that he sees. He needs a certain perception so that, when he sees problems arising, he can bring them to the notice of the Home Secretary.

I agree that we need to give the prison service a greater corporate sense. Some people believe that the old system, which was altered about 20 years ago, provided a better corporate sense than the more dispersed system within the Home Office. I am not sure what is meant by the suggestion that those in charge should be made more directly responsible. I can see what is meant by those words as a general statement, but I am not sure what they mean in terms of regional and local organisation.

I am sure that it is right that the present Director General should stay in his post. I do not say that because I appointed him, having seen him at close quarters in Northern Ireland; I am sure that overall it is the right thing to do.

It is also right to bring on to the prison board the four regional directors and two outside non-executive members. We all know that when one is in Opposition, arrangements are not such that one can keep tabs on everything that is happening, and I wonder who these nonexecutive members are and where they come from.

The right hon. Gentleman has not missed anything. We are still considering who they ought to be.

That gives me a certain amount of satisfaction. Are they to come from within the Home Office, from within the prison service, or from outside?

Outside.

That is very good sense. People were appointed to the May committee from outside. They were people with a different view of life, although with experience that was germane to the matters under inquiry.

The recommendation in the May report that there should be an inspectorate separate from the prison department is crucial, and I commend the announcement that the Home Secretary has made about Mr. Pearce. I also agree with the recommendation concerning the publication of his reports.

I note the points about the regular inspections of individual establishments and the investigation of particular incidents. The Home Secretary has said that the annual report will be published, and that other reports will be made publicly available as appropriate. These are, no doubt, well-chosen words. I hope that more often that not reports will be published, because reports that simply go back into the Department do not perform the function that should stem from an independent inspectorate.

Whatever we do about the size of the prison population, there will still be a problem in the remand centres and remand prisons. Reducing the size of the prison population—before sentencing anyway—will do nothing to deal with that problem.

There was a recent suicide at Risley. There was a coroner's inquest. What the coroner does about suicide and deaths is, of course, a matter for him. I had a word or two to say about that case and I noticed that the coroner criticised me for asking for a public inquiry. I agree with him fully, but as I had not asked for a public inquiry, that makes it all square. Given the overcrowding in the remand centres and the remand prisons, my view is that the inspector's report on this event should be published. Whether the coroner's inquest has a bearing on it, I do not know.

I have a great respect for the administration and staff at Risley, having had occasion to turn my mind to the problems of Risley when I was Home Secretary. But I wonder whether we are providing sufficient staff and sufficient resources at Risley to enable the job to be done properly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Batter-sea, South (Mr. Dubs) has raised the question of the death of Richard Campbell at Ashford remand centre and is pursuing that matter. I wish only to link that with what happened at Risley, given the nature of the present debate. The question I raise—my hon. Friend may well wish to raise other matters of concern—is whether it is a problem of staffing and conditions in the remand prisons. Are we providing the necessary resources through the Government and from this House? I believe that very recently there has been a further death.

There was a basic industrial relations problem in the two years before the May committee was set up, and particularly in the few months before it was set up. The continuous duty credit argument was an indication of that. But it was more than a matter of pay, and this is brought out clearly in chapter 10 of the report. The number of people employed in the prison service is such that we are, in effect, talking about an industry. If the matters mentioned in chapter 10 had arisen at British Leyland or in any other major British industry, questions would have been asked on the Floor of the House.

The story is quite remarkable. The media are always very quick to pick up individual events. When I was Home Secretary I tried to prompt a discussion on industrial relations in the prison service. If I had leaked a document, no doubt it would have appeared on the middle page of one of the weekend papers. Industrial relations in the prison service are bad. They are in many respects worse than those in many of the industries about which hon. Members are always popping up on the Floor of the House. The story that is told on pages 233 and 234 in chapter 10 of the report is well worth reading.

Anyone who believes that the Prison Officers Association is a Left-wing union should think again. The problems and events of last year arose out of poor union-employer relations. The May inquiry considered one point that was on my mind and it is a point that we may well come to again. It considered whether prison officers should be subject to any limitations or restrictions in respect of industrial action. Let me say at once that volunteers—there has been a great deal of talk lately on this subject—would be of no use.

What is mean by an all-out strike does not matter very much, because a strike by one or two key people in a prison can bring it to a standstill. But what about other staff as well as prison officers? How could the strike be enforced? The report correctly came to the conclusion that there should be no change in the status quo.

Two years ago we were faced with a serious situation on the Isle of Wight. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) is present. The prisons on the Isle of Wight were not brought to a standstill, but prisoners were not being allowed in although they were being allowed out. The dispute was over a small amount of money being given to prison officers because they lived across the water. If something as important but as small as that in the prison body politic could do that, we could face a similar situation again.

I think that perhaps I had better correct that statement by the right hon. Gentleman. The dispute was over the inconvenience of locality allowance compared with, say, Dartmoor. The prison officers live on the Isle of Wight.

I understand that, but there was also the question of allowances for crossing the water. That is an important issue for prison officers living there. The point is that it led to a breakdown in the running of the prisons on the Isle of Wight where historically we have put a number. What will the Government do when that happens again? Fortunately, we never got to the point of finally having to decide on the use of police cells as opposed to prison cells.

It is done now.

It may be that my hon. Friend can rule on this. I cannot. However, it is a question which must be asked. At that time we alerted the Army, but not with any idea that it would be brought into the matter. The report has properly dismissed any change in the status question about the right of prison officers to strike, but the situation could arise again over a small issue. Therefore, we should consider this problem.

The report refers to industrial relations. I shall not mention all the points, but there is a list. For example, the report states:

"An assistant or deputy governor should be designated at each establishment as a channel for complaints and a troubleshooter in the event of disputes occurring. This would not mean the governor being less concerned in the management of staff than he is at present."

The problems arise in the prisons. Therefore, more of the problems should be resolved there.

Another sentence states:

"certain issues … can never be settled locally, and must be for national negotiation."

The report states:

"The Home Office and the CSD should give consideration to a return to the situation in which matters of pay and conditions of service are negotiated directly between the Home Office and the POA."

There is no doubt that the split in responsibility between the CSD and the Home Office certainly weakened my position and those who worked with me in terms of negotiation. That comes into the wider discussion about the role of the CSD, but responsibility in these matters can rest in only one place, for divided responsibility leads to further trouble.

I leave it at that point, but the report goes on to talk about the role of the Prison Officers' Association. The report suggests that the POA should have better back up in its organisation than is now provided. That is a matter for the POA, but it is dealt with in the report.

The report deals with the working conditions of the staff. A number of hon. Members on both sides of the House represent areas where prisons are located. The report recommends that urgent attention be paid to the working conditions of the staff

"including … toilet facilities, office accommodation, rest rooms, showers, and facilities for drying clothes. … Any application for a club at a particular establishment should be looked at as favourably as possible."

I have no doubt that is of great importance, but it appears in the May report on the administration of the prisons. I should not have thought that it needed an obiter dicta on whether prison officers could have a club.

The report goes on to consider quarters. The problem of quarters in the prisons is important and it matters to prison officers. Many prison officers in the Prison Officers Association have told me that they do not merely want to be turnkeys. The prison officers who came to discuss a number of issues with our Back-Bench committee gave me a document which I wish to bring to the notice of the House, because it shows that the POA is considering wider matters. The document states:

"At present there exist two prison officer training schools, one at Wakefield and one at Leyhill. These schools teach service entrants how to carry out the duties of a prison officer. They do not provide, adequately, for teaching the behavioural patterns or the social skills that will be required to avoid confrontation circumstances with inmates."

The prison officers asked for development courses to be continued and for a third training school. The fact that prison officers are concerning themselves with training is important. It illustrates that prison officers want to be not just turnkeys, but professionals.

On the question of work to be done in the regions and centrally, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax has brought to my notice a discussion that she had with the Institution of Professional Civil Servants which apparently has had a meeting with the Home Secretary. That body is concerned that regional specialists—medical officers, chaplains, catering managers and education officers—are to be centralised in London as opposed to the regions. This is a matter for discussion between the Home Office and the organisation concerned, but if we are considering giving more responsibility to the regions and it is being centralised in Whitehall, it is a contradiction in terms. It is the general policy rather than the detailed argument about chaplains and so on about which I am concerned.

The evidence from the Expenditure Committee report and the recent report of the prison department shows an escalating prison population. The Home Secretary acknowledged that needs to be reduced. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. But if we were to reduce the size of the prison population tomorrow, there would still be a need for a capital expenditure programme on the prisons. If we build one new prison, it will not mean that there will be no need. The prisons which may be left may be in the wrong places for the purposes for which they are needed. They may need capital expenditure or replacement. It is no use arguing that there is a spare prison 190 miles away if one is thinking in terms of a remand prison.

Perhaps I may reinforce that point, particularly against the criticisms directed to the Home Secretary, by indicating that the prison governors have said that even if the 6,000 places currently being planned and provided were available, they would not increase occupancy by one prisoner because in the period before they were established a similar number of inadequate obsolescent cells would have gone out of use. Even the 6,000 places that we are currently planning will not increase capacity. We need a greater prison building programme.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

I have taken the opportunity this week to study my papers in the Northern Ireland Office. I introduced 50 per cent. remission as opposed to 33 per cent. remission. That was announced at about the end of 1975. We discussed the detail of the scheme, how it was to be handled, what it would mean in practice and what We would do when we announced it for the best part of 18 months.

It was probably discussed for longer than that.

Indeed. An individual often thinks on taking office that he has had a brilliant idea. The right hon. Gentleman has confirmed that others have often had brilliant ideas previously. Of course, we are not allowed to see the previous Government's papers. For the moment I shall take it that I had a brilliant idea.

Certainly.

When the right hon. Gentleman writes his memoirs he can claim a brilliant idea. It takes time to sort out a scheme such as increasing remission from 33 per cent. to 50 per cent. It takes time to consider public opinion. For example, can we assure the public that we are not letting out the wrong people? I wished to introduce such a scheme as Home Secretary, but I can imagine what Messrs. Saatchi and Saatchi would have made of it in the six months before the general election.

As the House will know, there is no parole in Northern Ireland. However, if an ex-prisoner offends again, a judge can add the earlier 50 per cent. remission to the new sentence.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that Parliament has two choices in intervening in these matters? First, it can do what he is suggesting and increase remission and the availability of parole. Secondly, it can take action to restrict the sentences that can be imposed. Does he think that the latter might be better than the former? Many of us in the courts suspect that judges are tending increasingly to take account of the activities of the Parole Board when they pass sentence and are adding to sentences equivalently.

The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. Last week I was talking to someone who worked in the Home Office about 20 years ago. He said that when remission was increased from 25 per cent. to 33 per cent. the judges took the opportunity to increase the tariff. I had not realised that. It would be worth considering whether the judges in Northern Ireland are nearer the body politic than judges in Britain. My information is that they are not.

I discovered that when remission was increased to 33⅓ per cent. in England and Wales the judges upped the tariff.

Surely this is entirely a subjective judgment. There is no objective evidence that the judges are increasing the sentences as the right hon. Gentleman suggests.

There is.

The figures setting out the sentences for various crimes indicate that the hon. and learned Gentleman is wrong.

There is the variant of continuing with parole for more than two years' imprisonment and for less than two years' imprisonment having 50 per cent. remis- sion. I respect the Lord Chief Justice and what he has said, but I suspect that by the end of the year we shall find that the proposals have had precious little effect.

Whatever we do about the size of the prison population, we shall still have a remand population. I have given examples relating to Risley and elsewhere. We are placing far too great a burden on the prison staff. The press hand-out from the Home Office conveniently summarises the report on the work of the prison department. It indicates that in 1979 the number of receptions on remand into prisons of untried males was 5 per cent. higher than the previous year and that the number of receptions of convicted unsentenced males was 6 per cent. higher than the previous year.

In the debate on these matters in another place Lord Hutchinson of Lullington made one of the most remarkable speeches that I have read. He observed that we have been discussing these issues for the best part of 20 years. He referred to the proportion of those in our prisons who are on remand. He said that 44 per cent. of those imprisoned on remand ultimately receive non-custodial sentences. He talked about the prison officer manpower that is involved in getting prisoners from Lewes prison to the London courts.

Lord Hutchinson discussed organisational matters, which are in part the responsibility of the Home Office. I greatly respect the Lord Chancellor and I appreciate that he is a politician. We talk about greater efficiency at British Leyland and greater efficiency in the coal industry. We talk about greater efficiency everywhere except in the way that our courts are used. I hope that the Lord Chancellor will produce one of his great explosions when wearing his political hat and will concern himself with the courts to the same extent as other areas about which he knows less.

Is my right hon. Friend totally unaware of the many steps that are being taken by the Government and which were taken by the previous Labour Government to deal with the serious problem of expediting trials and reducing the waiting period for prisoners on remand? Many schemes have been introduced recently to reduce the delay between committal and trial although that period is still disturbingly long, especially in the London area. Surely my right hon. Friend is being rather unfair to the legal profession in belittling the efforts that have been made to expedite proceedings between committal and trial.

No. The intentions of the legal profession have been excellent. What it has attempted to do has been good. However, just as mere politicians sometimes fail to get it right, I think that the legal profession has failed, or that part of it that organises the courts. I leave it there because I think that the speech of Lord Hutchinson speaks for itself.

We must examine the remand system. Whatever we do about administration, industrial relations and reducing the prison population, the problem of remand prisons and centres will remain. Why is it that the same problem is not experienced in Scotland? Is that because the Scottish system includes the 110-day rule for serious offences and the 40-day rule for less serious offences? Does that concentrate the mind of the legal profession? Are those rules more effective than the good intentions that politicians and lawyers are good at mouthing? We should examine the Scottish system because apparently in Scotland the waiting list is not nearly so high.

The May report is of great value. I hope that the House will put its mind to the administration of prisons. Every 15 years the broadcasting system is reconsidered. Perhaps the prison system should be reconsidered on the same time scale. The May report is excellent, and although Mr. Justice May said harsh words about the legal profession, the report shows what the legal profession can do if it puts its mind to it. Perhaps we should have a May report on how the courts are run. We should then be able to move on two fronts, as both sides of the House desire.

I hope that I shall be forgiven if I dwell more on the Expenditure Committee's report than on the May report. I was very flattered that the Government bracketed the Expenditure Committee report with the May report as constituting the most comprehensive analysis of prison affairs since the Second World War. There has been widespread support for the Expenditure Committee's recommendations. That is not empty rhetoric.

As a result of the initiative of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, a one-day conference was held last year to which several organisations were invited. They gave their views and the conference was followed up by a questionnaire. As a result, one can consider any one of the 52 recommendations that were made, and the resulting document gives an idea of what the various organisations thought, and whether they agreed with the recommendations. I was delighted by the unanimity of support. In a debate such as this, it is impossible to do justice to all of the 52 recommendations. However, I should like to consider some of them in three separate groups: first, the question arises of the length of sentences; secondly, one must consider the alternatives to imprisonment; thirdly, one must consider the possibility of change within prison regimes.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary recognised that the most effective way of dealing with the immediate pressure on prisons is to shorten sentences, where that can be done without danger to the public. The Expenditure Committee made clear that a distinction must be drawn between those prisoners who are dangerous to the public and must be incarcerated for as long as it is in the public interest, and those who are not a danger to the public.

All research suggests that a shorter sentence is just as effective, if not more effective, than a longer one. I think that my right hon. Friend knows that I disagree with him about how such shorter sentences should be carried out. I do not believe that pious exhortations to the judiciary are sufficient. The Home Office should now consider the maximum sentences for varying types of crime, and should bring their proposals before the House in a calm and considered way rather than in response to an emergency. I am sure that that is the only sensible way of dealing with the problem.

I particularly liked the idea of the Advisory Council on the Penal System. It suggested that while there should be a maximum sentence for the general run-of-the-mill case, it should also be possible, in exceptional circumstances, for a court to advocate a much longer sentence, and to attach the reasons for so doing. That would deal with those evil cases where a longer sentence than usual is needed.

In Scotland, sentences tend to be shorter. There is no suggestion that the rate of crime is any worse in Scotland than in England. We therefore have a practical example on our doorstep of shorter sentences which we should follow up.

I commend the Expenditure Committee's suggestion that there should be a wider use of the partially suspended sentence, and that it should be possible to use it for sentences of three months or longer. Indeed, that point was made by the Magistrates Association. It works on the principle that it is a good idea to give an offender a short sharp shock of imprisonment in those cases in which it is generally agreed that the maximum impact can be made. The Expenditure Committee visited prisons and spoke to prisoners, and some of them seemed to share that view. I believe that it is worth trying.

I should also like to commend an idea to which the Government gave a cold shoulder in their observations on the report—namely, the simple expedient that courts should be given general information about the availability of places in the various institutions. I suspect that the Government are afraid that it will be thought that they are putting undue pressure on the independent courts. However, I believe that it is a sensible proposition, and I commend it to the House.

The Expenditure Committee's report mentioned several alternatives to imprisonment and those alternatives were echoed in the all-party penal affairs group report. I am sure that other hon. Members will wish to dwell on this subject. As a result of an oversight, one alternative did not appear as a recommendation in the Expenditure Committee's report. Therefore, it may not have received the Government's attention, although it deserves it. I refer to the use of probation "with strings attached".

A package deal would be involved, in which the condition of probation would be that the offender must accept a package, individually tailored for his needs. That would represent a positive contribution. For example, someone who found alcohol a problem might be asked, as a condition of probation, to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous group. A work-shy person might be required to attend a sheltered workshop. We visited the Bulldog scheme, run by the inner London probation authority, which specifically tries to get petty workshy offenders to do a decent day's work. We were impressed by the scheme. In many cases it succeeds with people that one might otherwise have thought to be hopeless. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the appointment of Mr. Pearce, who is responsible for this particular project. We warmly commend it.

We also recommended that there should be a thorough inquiry into the pay and conditions of prison staff. That has already been carried out by the May committee. Alas, I fear that it was not done in response to the recommendations of the Expenditure Committee, because if it had been, it would have been carried out more quickly. The report was carried out as a result of a crisis in the prison system rather than as a result of our recommendations. Nevertheless, we welcome the thorough review that May made of what had hitherto been a neglected issue.

One suggestion has not received a very happy response from the Government, judging from their observations on the report. I refer to the suggestion that there should be a pilot scheme, at least, for paying prisoners the market rate for the job. I cannot stress too strongly how the Expenditure Committee felt about this. We felt that those in prison should do a decent day's work if that were possible to arrange. We all know the difficulties. Indeed, the May report was somewhat critical. It suggested—although not in the inelegant language that I shall use—that everyone had thrown in the sponge about producing decent jobs and conditions for prisoners. The possibility of paying the market rate for the job seems even more remote. However, if people are to be kept in custody, such work would represent the type of positive custody commended by the Expenditure Committee and by the May report. I hope that the Government will look again at this suggestion. Perhaps prisoners would then be able to contribute to their families. This would be preferable to allowing the families to remain on social security, and that is all to the good. Otherwise we find ourselves in the extraordinary position of paying heavily to keep people in prison and paying again to keep their families outside.

Finally, I wish to make a point about parole which goes far beyond the point made by the Expenditure Committee, which contented itself with suggesting that there should be a thorough review of parole—not just an internal exercise but an independent study. I would go even further. All the considerations and views that I have heard about parole lead me to believe that the system is basically and intrinsically unfair to prisoners. The prisoners feel great frustrations while they wait for the results and they are irritated by the fact that they are not given reasons.

In any case, a refusal of parole may depend not on how the prisoner has conducted himself, but on measures over which he has no control. These include whether there is a statistical likelihood of his offending again, his employment prospects outside and a stable home background. Once a man is in prison, there is nothing he can do about these aspects. To make parole conditional upon them is fundamentally wrong. We should consider revamping the system of shortening sentences by other means.

I urge upon the Government the necessity for taking swift action now. I was somewhat disturbed by the observation in the White Paper on the Expenditure Committee report. It says:

"Earlier this year it"—

that is, the prison population—

"rose to 44,800 and continues to be not much below this level. (Unusual fluctuations of this kind inevitably impose severe additional strains and, if prolonged, must raise the question of exceptional responses by legislative or administrative action.)"

We need this exceptional response now and not at some unspecified time in the future.

I join with hon. Members on both sides of the House who have paid tribute to the work of Mr. Justice May and his colleagues in preparing the report that is now the subject of the debate. The report is illuminating and very perceptive. I believe that Mr. Justice May and his colleagues have identified the major factors which motivated the anxieties of prison officers and staff in 1978. They have also identified the problems which led to deterioration in industrial relations which was evident at that time.

I was encouraged this morning to hear the Home Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) identifing overcrowding in Britain's prisons as one of the major issues confronting us at present. Like a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House, I have been fascinated by the experiments which have been conducted in the Dutch penal system. I am interested in the suggestion for a moratorium on the building of new prisons. Equally, I am interested in the demand for saner sentencing policies.

A few weeks ago I listened carefully to the Home Secretary's statement to the House emphasising his commitment to shorter sentences. I believe that these developments are an encouraging aspect of the Home Secretary's approach to the problem of overcrowding in British prisons. I believe that the poor living conditions provided for prison staff and prisoners is a major problem. Equally, I believe that as long as prisons remain the final sanction in the mechanism of social control in this country, we cannot ignore the conditions in which prisoners are obliged to live.

I was particularly disturbed some months ago to read the comments attributed to one of Britain's distinguished prison governors—the governor of Strangeways, in Manchester, Mr. Norman Brown. He was quoted in a local newspaper as saying:

"If we don't tackle this situation"—

he was referring to overcrowding at Strangeways—

"we are going to have riots and serious problems. It is an ever-present fear that one day we will have a crisis on our hands—it could happen in the exercise yard, on the landings, in the workshops."

Mr. Brown made this statement against the background of conditions in a prison that was built in 1868. In appendix 6, list A, of the May report we see that Strangeways prison was built in 1868 to accommodate 1,087 prisoners. At present it is accommodating 1,700 prisoners. That is the reality of overcrowding. When Mr. Brown made his comments, 432 prisoners were allocated two to a cell, and 687 prisoners were living and sleeping three to a cell. They were living in those conditions for 22 hours a day. That is the reality of overcrowding.

I have listened to anguished comments from hon. Members on both sides of the House about this serious problem. We tend to overlook the fact that overcrowding on that scale is against the minimum rules laid down in the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the May report refers. On page 130 the report quotes the European convention where it says:

"Prisoners shall normally be lodged during the night in individual cells unless circumstances dictate otherwise."

It goes on:

"Where sleeping accommodation is in individual cells or rooms, each prisoner shall occupy by night a cell or a room by himself."

We are not achieving this minimum standard, and that is a matter of great concern.

Returning to the question of Strange-ways prison, I was encouraged when the Home Secretary said this morning that the new prison at Appleton Thorn in Lancashire is about to be built. I would like a response from the Minister of State when he winds up the debate as to when Appleton Thorn is likely to come into operation. This is a serious matter, and I echo the view expressed on page 151 of the report, paragraph 6.102. It says:

"The fact is that the community"—

it is talking about the community in Britain—

"has evaded its responsibilities for too long in the past and that, if we continue—as seems likely—to send so many people to prison, then we cannot shrink from providing the resources to ensure that both staff and inmates may be accommodated in premises which are acceptable according to modern standards. It is no good arguing that capital expenditure on prisons should always bear some constant and inferior relationship to capital expenditure on more electorally attractive areas. … "

I believe that the May report was right in that judgment, and I hope that it is a judgment that will be endorsed by the Minister and in the debate.

With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about jury checks.

I have now completed the review, which I have been carrying out over recent months in consultation with the Home Secretary, the Lord Chancellor and the Director of Public Prosecutions, of the arrangements whereby jury checks are carried out in a limited number of cases under the guidelines laid down by my predecessor. In reaching my conclusions, I have taken account of the recent judgments of the Court of Appeal, particularly that in the case of R v Mason. A copy of the revised guidelines that I propose to issue has been placed in the House of Commons Library.

The existing law provides, as it has for over 600 years, and rightly in my view, that the parties to any jury trial may inspect a copy of the panel from which the jury in their trial will be chosen, and there is no legal restriction on the use which may be made of this information. It has been accepted by the courts that the objects of this provision were to enable the parties to inquire about the members of the panel and to decide whether any should be challenged. I have also taken into account that, although the selection of those who are summoned for jury service from among those qualified and the final selection of those who are called to serve on a particular jury must be random, both parties to criminal proceedings have the right to object to a juror being called to serve, the exercise of which inevitably limits the truly random nature of the jury which eventually tries the case.

A distinction must be drawn between checks to which my guidelines refer—namely, on the records of police special branches—and checks of criminal records which may be made for the primary purpose of preventing persons who are disqualified by reason of their previous convictions from sitting on a jury. It is a criminal offence for a disqualified person knowingly to serve on a jury, and a check of criminal records of the members of a panel is a matter for the police. That was recognised by the Court of Appeal in R v Mason as a proper thing to be done.

The Association of Chief Police Officers, after discussions with the Home Office, is making recommendations to its members as to the circumstances and procedures relating to checks on criminal records, and these will be annexed to my guidelines.

The checks, which for convenience I shall refer to as "authorised checks", and to which my guidelines refer, are checks which go beyond criminal records and for purposes wider than the mere discovery of previous convictions. I consider that it is in the public interest that the prosecution should continue to make use of its right to make inquiries about a jury panel with a view to exercising its right to stand by a potential juror. The practice, however, should not be unlimited, and I therefore endorse the general principles of the previous guidelines which were self-imposed restraints on the part of the Director of Public Prosecutions as a prosecutor.

Experience, recent observations of the Court of Appeal and a keen public interest in the subject have nevertheless caused me to make some revisions to those guidelines. The most significant are as follows. First, no check on the records of police special branches will be made except on my authority, following a recommendation from the Director of Public Prosecutions. Secondly, except in terrorist cases, such checks will not be authorised in cases involving so-called strong political motives. Thirdly, in cases involving security, such as under the Official Secrets Act, such checks will be authorised only when national security is involved and it is expected that the court will be asked to sit in camera. Fourthly, in no other type of case will such checks be authorised.

Except where and in so far as it may be necessary to confirm the identity of a member of the panel against whom the initial checks had raised doubts, checks will not be made which go beyond checks on criminal records or those of police special branches.

All parties to proceedings have a statutory right to inspect the jury panel under section 5 (2) of the Juries Act 1974. Therefore, the judge's authority for access is not required and will not be sought. However, the judge and defence counsel will be informed when a check has been authorised.

The result of an authorised check will be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The director will then decide, having regard to the provisions of the guidelines, what information ought to be brought to the attention of prosecuting counsel. Records will be kept by the Director of Public Prosecutions, which I will see and thus be able to monitor the operation of the guidelines.

I have recognised that the defence may have a particular reason to wish to have the panel checked for disqualified persons or to seek assistance in obtaining information relative to its right of peremptory challenge but has no access to the information available to the Crown. It is also my view that the courts have no jurisdiction to order the police to reveal information on their records relating to jurors. Accordingly, in cases which would fall within my guidelines, I shall be prepared to consider a request made by defence counsel through the Director of Public Prosecutions for assistance in obtaining information. I understand that chief constables, on the general recommendation of their association, will be prepared to consider a request relating to checks on criminal records, if approved by the director. In both cases, the results of any check undertaken will be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who will treat them in accordance with my guidelines. The intention of this proposal is merely to assist the defence and not in any way to restrict the right of the defendant to inspect the panel and to take such action as is lawful.

We welcome the fact that at last the Attorney-General has seen fit to make a statement on jury checking or vetting—better late than never. However, we take issue with him on a number of matters.

The statement gives cause for concern. An opportunity has been lost properly to look again at the guidelines introduced by my right hon. and learned Friend the former Attorney-General. In a sentence, the proposals are cumbersome, unwieldy and in many respects unnecessary.

It is unfortunate, to say the least, that a matter of such grave constitutional importance should be dealt with today, on a Friday.

Every year some 200,000 jurors are sworn. They see at first hand and take part in the criminal justice process, which gives people an identification with the enforcement of the criminal law. It is important therefore that the system should work properly and in the interests of justice. Unhappily, in recent times it has become fashionable in certain quarters to be critical of jurors and the jury system. Not least among the critics is a small minority of judges, aggrieved in some instances when juries bring in verdicts with which they do not agree. They seem to forget that that is one of the great strengths and glories of our jury system. Our system is such that jurors speak with a free voice, independent, untrammelled and not intimidated by judicial or other authority.

May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman a number of questions arising from his statement? Is he aware that the case of R. v. Mason has been heavily criticised in many quarters, not least by The Times in a striking leader? Does he agree that the question of providing information to prosecution and defence counsel was put into a different category when his noble Friend the Lord Chancellor decided, at almost dead of night, without consultation and debate in this House, that the occupation of jurors should no longer be given in the list?

On the question of challenges, the constitutional right of the defence—although not the Crown, of course—to challenge jurors, having been reduced from seven to three, has been greatly restricted.

Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that the Home Office should deal with the whole question of checks and not the chief officers of police?

Finally, when will the right hon. and learned Gentleman hold further consultations, and with whom—in the near future?

It is true that this statement is rather late—mostly because of the decision in the Mason case. The statement had been prepared and agreed before then. As I am sure the hon. and learned Member will be the first to recognise, that decision was a considerable spanner in the works.

As regards the statement being made on a Friday, I have been available all week for this. There has been a great deal of pressure on the House and a large number of statements. There have been two Supply days, which I think the business managers were determined not to cut into any more than was necessary. This Friday is, of course, a very convenient day in view of the nature of the debate in which the House is engaged. Many people will share an interest in the debate and in this matter.

I think that to suggest that there has been a lost opportunity to look at my predecessor's guidelines is an unfair criticism, because I have made considerable changes to those guidelines and I have looked carefully at them.

Perhaps I may deal with the "better late than never" points which eventually arose in the form of questions from the hon. and learned Gentleman. It is true that Mason has been criticised, but it is now the law, and the law has to be enforced. It is one of the purposes of the statement that information to prosecution and defence should be even-handed. I think that the reason that occupations have been taken out is the number of occasions on which people were challenged simply because their occupation was one which the defence decided was not an appropriate occupation for a juror to hold in the nature of the case being tried.

As regards the rights of the defence to challenge being reduced from seven to three, that was the decision of the House, with, I think, very little opposition, during the course of the Criminal Law Bill.

I simply do not understand why the hon. and learned Member asks why the Home Office does not deal with these checks rather than the Association of Chief Police Officers. The Home Office does not have control over provincial police forces. It cannot tell them exactly what to do. It can merely issue guidance. ACPO has, very sensibly I think, drawn up some guidelines which will impose restrictions upon powers which Mason has underlined that they have.

As regards future consultations, the principal matter that we shall have to discuss is whether the group of disqualifications should be widened, and whether there should be further legislation which would impose a duty upon a juror attending at the court of trial to sign a form, for example, to the effect that he is not disqualified, and if he signs it falsely he would, perhaps, commit an offence.

rose—

Order. Perhaps I may appeal to hon. Members to make sure that questions are succinct, because we are taking time out of the debate on the prison system.

As one who has repeatedly urged my right hon. and learned Friend to have regard, above all, to the protection of society and the administration of justice in regard to any danger of the infiltration of juries by evilly disposed persons, perhaps I may take this opportunity of congratulating him on new guidelines which hold the balance very evenly between the defence of society and the State and the needs of the defence.

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend.

I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman's statement—if not the timing or the notice given—will be very largely welcomed. Does he agree that, in the case of the Official Secrets Act, it is only section 1 on which exemption should be made? Secondly, does he agree that, if a defence counsel has access only if the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions are willing for it to be given, it would be preferable to allow an independent judge to be involved in this process?

On the first point, there are cases under section 2 of the Official Secrets Act which would involve national security and in which the evidence may be given in camera, so it would, of course, cover those.

Concerning the defence, it is well known that Directors of Public Prosecutions all through the years have always been most anxious to ensure that the defence has been given every assistance. I am sure that they will make certain in this case, when they act as a sieve, that that will be so, and in any question of doubt they will consult me.

I accept that my right hon. and learned Friend's statement represents a perfectly fair and reasonable compromise between the difficult conflicting interests involved in this matter. However, has he considered one or two of the consequences? For example, has he considered the potential damage to the reputation of a juror who is asked to stand by for the Crown? Does he recollect the situation in the anarchists' trial in which an eminent chartered accountant had to stand by and receive a great deal of uninformed criticism? How does he propose to overcome that difficulty?

I am very grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for reminding the House of this matter, because the fact that the juror is challenged does not and must never be seen to mean that he either has a serious criminal record or is in any way unsound. I am delighted to have this opportunity to make that clear.

The case of the eminent chartered accountant is a very good case in point. This person was named upon a document found in the possession of the defendant. That document had a number of other names on it, including that of the late Lord Mountbatten. One view of it, which could be fairly taken, was that it was a "hit" list for a terrorist organisation. It would obviously be quite wrong to allow that individual to serve on the jury because, say, when exhibit 92 was shown to the jury, he might say "That is me," because the document contains his name, his Christian names, his address and his telephone number, and they are all right. Therefore, he had to be taken off the jury and no reason could be given, when he appeared on television and was interviewed by the press, because it might have prejudiced the trial. Therefore, he suffered, unfortunately, but it was nothing to do with a security check; it was simply because a police officer had the good sense to recognise the name as being on one of the documents. It was obviously in the interests of justice—I think that the trial would have had to be stopped and started again—not to allow that person to serve.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to say publicly that there is nothing of any kind known against that man which tarnishes his character in any way.

Will the Attorney-General enlarge briefly upon the reasons for the second of his revisions to the guidelines? Does "terrorist" in that connection have the meaning that it has in the prevention of terrorism Act or some other meaning? What, in any case, is the ground for distinguishing between violent offences and other crimes for the purpose of this change?

What happens is that in terrorist cases particularly—and we have tried to limit it as far as possible—where very strong political views may be held, there is always a risk that there will be someone whose views are so extreme, particularly on one side or another, in a charge of terrorism that he will not approach the trial of the defendant fairly, from one side or the other. Such persons may be so violently opposed to any form of terrorism, or so violently pro that form of attack on society, that we have to know in order to remove them.

I give the House an example. In one terrorist case it was found that one of the jurors on the panel was the mistress of Michael X. One can see that she would not have been a suitable person to try the case, because he was hanged the week before in the West Indies.

May I press my right hon. and learned Friend a little further about the case of Mason? I understand that that case gave approval to the practice whereby prosecution counsel may be supplied with notes of previous convictions and other matters that are not, by the will of Parliament, to exclude someone from serving on a jury, and that such information may be used as the basis for a successful challenge by the prosecution to that person serving on a jury. Is it not right to say, as The Times said, that that flouted the will of Parliament, and is it not unacceptable that nothing is to be done about it?

It is important to make clear that the will of Parliament is that under no circumstances may certain disqualified people serve on juries. Lord Justice Lawton, supported by his fellow judges, said in the case of Mason "You may not check a jury just to find out what criminal record a man has, but if you are checking a jury in order to find out whether it includes disqualified people and other information is thrown up in the course of that check, counsel may make use of it in the appropriate case".

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that each further revision of the guidelines is in danger of eroding the English tradition of a random jury and, in that sense, eroding the whole jury system itself? Is he further aware that some of us have doubts about the DPP and himself being in charge of the operation of the guidelines, because the Lord Chancellor made a sudden change in the rules, in relation to the Shrewsbury trade union trial in the early 1970s, without informing Parliament? Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman report to Parliament annually in such a way that we can monitor the operation of the guidelines and ensure that we know the extent to which they are being used and exactly what is happening?

Any right of challenge, whether given to the prosecution or the defence, limits random selection to some extent, but the right to inspect the panel has existed for many centuries. I have never previously heard any suggestion that the decision of my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor to remove the occupations—if that is what the hon. Gentleman is speaking of—had any connection with the Shrewsbury trial. I doubt it very much.

As for consultation and reporting to the House, I shall certainly consider those matters.

Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that the public will be reassured by his statement, which lays at rest some of the recent challenges to even a limited form of jury vetting? Is he also aware that the Bar will be reassured by his upholding of the fundamental principle that in this country we take the jury as we find it?

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. I hope that that will be the view taken by the British public.

Is not the legal effect of the statement that it binds no one except the DPP and that any chief prosecuting solicitor can take the view of the one in Northampton—namely, that he can act in any way that seems reasonable to him in order to check the jury list?

There is no sanction that can be enforced on anyone in relation to examining criminal records. A complete sanction is provided on any checks beyond that.

As a layman in these matters, I have always regarded the essential principle as being the right of an individual to a trial before 12 jurors, each of whom must be true and good. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that that is the first principle which he must operate, notwithstanding the important points that have been made by other hon. Members?

It is important to remember that it is unusual for checks to be authorised. I have restricted still further the guidelines that are themselves a restriction. Before they were imposed, the situation was almost a free-for-all. I hope that the occasions on which I shall be asked to authorise a check will be few and far between.

May I ask, for the record, for a definition of a terrorist case? The statutory provision has been mentioned. In the event of someone being held under the prevention of terrorism Act and subsequently charged with an offence that does not involve terrorism, will recourse be had to special branch files?

Will the hon. Gentleman put his second point again? I am afraid that I did not understand it.

In the event of someone being held under the prevention of terrorism Act and subsequently charged with a non-terrorist offence, would there be a vetting of his files by the special branch?

The only occasion on which there can be an authorised check, with my consent, is when a charge involves acts of terrorism. The definition of that is acts in which violence has been used or there has been kidnapping or anything of that sort in the furtherance of political purposes and involving terrorism.

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there will be disappointment that he has sanctioned the continuation of jury vetting, albeit with further restrictions? Can he explain a rather puzzling point? How can he ensure, without legislative backing, that his new guidelines will be enforced? After all, he gave his word to the House on the previous guidelines that no jury vetting would take place without his sanction. Now he says that he can enforce the new guidelines without legislation.

Will the matter not be even more difficult if there is no clear distinction between the checks carried out to see whether potential jurors are disqualified from serving on a jury on statutory grounds and the check that will be part of the jury-vetting process? Is it not likely that, by having those two muddled up, the clear distinction between them will be eroded and practices against the guidelines will be able to occur?

The authority to go to police files beyond the CRO will be given only by me. I cannot control what individual police forces do in relation to access to criminal records. It is entirely a matter for them. In discussions with the Home Office, they have imposed certain restrictions, in agreement with ACPO, which will be put in the Library attached to my guidelines. That is as far as I can go. I can ask them not to carry out checks and they will have to decide whether to follow their own association's recommendations. I am confident that they will do so.

May I finally put four brief questions to the Attorney-General? Does he agree that the fact that we have majority verdicts in this country provides an effective check and balance to cope with any maverick or unsuitable juror? The Juries Act 1974 sets out those who are disqualified to serve on juries. Secondly if that list is not wide enough, should it not be put to the House to decide what, if any, additions should be made?

Thirdly—and this is a serious matter in relation to jury vetting—does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that it would be a constitutional outrage if potential jurors were to feel that they were being selected or vetted to be the placemen or parrot voices of some legal establishment? Finally, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that it would be equally horrifying if potential jurors were to be deterred from jury service by the thought that their privacy was being invaded by State or other snoopers checking on their suitability for jury service?

Those are all matters which I considered before making my statement.

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

1. Employment Act 1980.

2. Magistrates' Courts Act 1980.

3. Education (Scotland) Act 1980.

4. Water (Scotland) Act 1980.

5. Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980.

6. Criminal Appeal (Northern Ireland) Act 1980.

7. Finance Act 1980.

8. Breasclete Harbour Order Confirmation Act 1980.

9. British Railways Order Confirmation Act 1980.

10. Greater London Council (Money) Act 1980.

11. Salvation Army Act 1980.

12. Falmouth Container Terminal Act 1980.

13. London Transport Act 1980.

I am grateful for this opportunity to make—

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It seems ridiculous that in a debate on the prison system we are to hear speeches by two Front-Bench Scottish Members, when as far as I can see there is not one Scottish Back Bencher present to take part in the debate.

I understand that this is a United Kingdom debate. First, the two Front Bench speakers have promised to be brief. Secondly, they are genuine Scots.

I am grateful for your comment, Mr. Speaker. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my intervention will be very brief, because I recognise the desire of many hon. Members to take part in the debate, which is a United Kingdom debate on the May committee recommendations. The report affected the whole of the United Kingdom, but its conclusions recognised that the problems of the prison service in Scotland, although serious in certain respects, were less acute and less grave than those elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

The committee recognised, for example, that the problems of recruiting prison officers in Scotland were less than those elsewhere, and that the growth in the prison population, although it had been substantial in the 1950s and 1960s, had shown virtually no increase during the past decade, contrary to indications in England and Wales. Also, whilst it recognised that there were severe problems of over-crowding in certain local prisons in Scotland, overall there was no general problem of overcrowding, and the capacity of the Scottish prisons was greater than the number of prisoners presently incarcerated.

The Government recognise that in Scotland, as elsewhere in Britain, there is the problem of too many persons being sent to prison when they could more properly be dealt with in other ways. By the Bail Etc. (Scotland) Act, which received its Royal Assent some months ago, we have abolished money bail and replaced it by a system of bail on conditions which has led to fewer accused persons having to be sent to prison on remand because of their inability to find the bail money required by the courts. This has had some effect on the number of prisoners held on remand, although it is too early to say what the long-term effects will be.

Secondly, there are provisions in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, which received its Third Reading a short time ago, which will make more unlikely the use of prison except as a last resort by the courts. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary responsible for social work matters recently announced the extension of the community service order scheme, which until now has operated only on an experimental basis in five areas of Scotland. We believe that this will equally have a desirable effect in this respect.

Finally, there is the recognition that in Scotland an alarmingly large number of persons are incarcerated for non-payment of fines. About 40 per cent. of admissions in any one year are for non-payment of fines, although the period of imprisonment served is very short. Nevertheless, it is a grave problem, and the Government hope to start in October an experiment in fine enforcement officers in Edinburgh and Airdrie to ensure that the proper payment of fines is enforced by the court in order that it will not be necessary to resort to imprisonment.

I turn to the specific recommendations of the report. Many deal with matters of internal management, training and conditions of staff, their management of prisoners and similar related matters. Over the past few months we have been working on the composition and terms of reference of a number of working groups that will be making detailed recommendations on the implementation of the May recommendations. We have been having consultations with the various prison service staff associations in order to ensure that their experience and expertise will be able to be incorporated in the event of proposals being implemented. We are nearing completion on these matters. I am to have a meeting with the Scottish Prison Governors Committee of the Society of Civil and Public Servants, at its request, in the near future.

One of the other areas in which the report made important recommendations was the position of visiting committees in Scotland, which in recent years have not been as satisfactory as their counterparts in England and Wales, because of certain legal problems. These arose as a result of the reorganisation of local government, as it is local authorities that appoint the members of the visiting committees to adult prisons in Scotland. These problems have now been resolved. The new visiting committees have been established. We are also taking on board the May committee's recommendations for the better training of, and advice and assistance to, the members of those visiting committees. There is to be a conference in October representative of all the visiting committees, at which we hope a training programme will be properly established.

The final matter to which I wish to refer is the very important recommendation with regard to a distanced prisons inspectorate. That recommendation was made only in relation to England and Wales. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has indicated his assent to such a proposition for England and Wales. We have naturally been giving consideration to the position in Scotland as well. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland intends that there should be a Scottish inspectorate, and it is intended to appoint a chief inspector to head it. My right hon. Friend intends to look around as wide a range of experience as possible to choose a suitable person. The chief inspector will be assisted by a staff with substantial prison experience. We hope that the inspectorate will be established and be in operation by the end of this year.

While the report correctly indicated that the problems of the Scottish prison service were not as acute as those elsewhere in the United Kingdom, it recognised, as do the Government, that there is still scope for substantial improvement. Within the resources available, we intend to ensure that improvements are made.

The indications that I have mentioned today, plus the other proposals that will come forward in the next few weeks and months, will ensure that the prison service in Scotland, which already performs a very valuable and useful role in ensur- ing the proper administration of our prisons, will be able to benefit from further improvement in the months and years to come.

I shall speak extremely briefly. It is unsatisfactory to have this kind of debate about Scottish prisons. We shall have to find a separate opportunity to debate the May report in relation to Scotland. I know that many hon. Members want to speak, and I shall therefore take only two minutes.

I want to respond to three points made by the Minister. First, I welcome the setting up of the working groups, although it is a bit late in the day, because the May report was published last October. Nine months have now passed, and I should have expected the groups to be established and to produce some results by now.

I am glad to hear that the legal difficulties over the visiting committees, which I thought required legislative provision, have apparently been solved without that. The May committee legitimately criticised successive Governments for what had happened about visiting committees in Scotland. I am glad that that matter is now being put right.

I turn to the inspectorate. Although this was a recommendation for England and Wales, and has rather less validity in Scotland—at least, some of the reasons for the recommendations have less validity in Scotland than in England and Wales—I think that the Secretary of State's decision is correct. There will be the question of establishing the right relationship between the inspectorate and the Department and the Secretary of State. I am sure that some independence there, and particularly the publication of an annual report about the prison system in Scotland, will be a valid improvement in the way in which we manage prisons in Scotland.

I should have liked to say quite a number of other things, but in view of the circumstances I shall desist. I simply repeat that we must find a way to debate the Scottish prisons separately, because there are a number of very important matters that should have the attention of the House.

I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will forgive me if I complain bitterly about our having this important debate on a Friday, and in addition that a statement and questions on it have taken half an hour out of the very short time available to discuss one of the most disgraceful situations in the country at present—the problem of containing, assessing and rehabilitating about 44,000 people who are in prison and the problems of the staff.

If parliamentary time could not be found before the recess, I believe that it would have been more advisable to have the debate after the recess. After all, we are talking about problems that have gone on under successive Governments for over 20 years, so a delay of a couple of months to allow the House to discuss fully and properly these urgent matters would probably have been more acceptable to those who take seriously the present deteriorating conditions. It is dreadfully wrong that Members who have a contribution to make should be prevented from making it because half-an-hour has been taken out of the time for this debate.

The report on the work of the prison department for 1979 paints a depressing picture of a rising prison population. Increasing overcrowding and deteriorating physical conditions are worsening all the time. In the first half of this year, the position became markedly and rapidly worse to the extent that the prison governors have described the prison system as

"collapsing under the sheer weight of numbers."

There is nothing new about prison overcrowding or such warnings, but the current degree of squalor, with nearly 40 per cent. of all prisoners now sleeping two or three to a cell, is unprecedented. Moreover, for the first time the governors have warned that they are running out of cells to overcrowd. It is only possible to overcrowd the Victorian cells since modern cells are too small. Landings and dining rooms have been and are used. It is said that it has been possible in Winchester to cram five young men in a slightly larger than ordinary cell.

The seriousness of the present position faces us with some stark financial choices.

One possible way of overcoming a part of the problem is to make an open-ended commitment to devote massive sums of money to a vastly expanded prison building programme. The Home Secretary referred to that in particular. I notice from the statistics in the report that a new place in a category B prison costs £40,000 to build. The average cost of keeping a single prisoner inside for a year has now reached over £5,800. Let no one who might be tempted to advocate this course be in any doubt whatsoever about the scale of the expenditure involved.

With the prison population at its present level, 9,000 new places would be needed merely to end the sharing of cells. A further 2,000 places would be needed to cope with the increase in the prison population projected in the report for the early 1980s. That makes a total of 11,000 new places.

If we went further and chose to end the abhorrent process of slopping out, a further 5,000 new places would be required to provide for those lost in providing improved sanitation facilities. In total, to end overcrowding and slopping out we should be asked to spend about £½ billion in capital expenditure alone. Thereafter, every one of the new prison places would cost nearly £6,000 a year to maintain.

I do not believe that such expenditure is economically justifiable at a time when public expenditure must be restrained; nor can it be morally justified when so many of those in prison are petty offenders who could safely and more appropriately be dealt with in other ways.

The May committee rightly argued the problem of petty, persistent offenders. It said that continued efforts were required to find solutions

"not only to keep such people out of prison, but to keep them out of the criminal justice system as a whole."

People who work in prisons strongly support that view.

In its evidence to the Expenditure Committee in 1978, the Prison Officers Association stated:

"It is easy to recognise categories of offenders who can loosely be described as 'social inadequates'—inmates who clutter up the penal system and for whom imprisonment is simply a refuge."

I pay tribute to the Chairman of the Expenditure Sub-Committee on prisons, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes), and her colleagues who did a great service not only to the House but to the country in producing such a balanced report. It would be a grave injustice if it joined so many others gathering dust in the archives of the House of Commons.

I asked the Home Department yesterday to confirm some figures about people with whom I believe simple alternatives could deal adequately. It would give a totally wrong impression if I were thought to say that there was nobody at all in the prison system who needs containing. I know well—and most hon. Members appreciate it—that there is a hard core of dangerous, difficult men, and a few women, who will have to be contained for a long time.

A total of 308 women are in prison for soliciting. A total of 2,700 alcoholics, 2,500 maintenance defaulters and 16,500 fine defaulters are also in prison along with 320 cannabis smokers. For having no home, sleeping rough or offences under the vagrancy laws, 350 people are in prison. For drug dependence—not drug pushing—1,260 people are in prison. Another 400 people with mental disorders or mental problems are in prison on any given day.

If one adds that up, one comes to a healthy number of people who could be removed inexpensively and fairly speedily from the prison system. I accept that the 16,500 fine defaulters are in prison for short periods, but the work and administration involved is colossal. There must be a better way of dealing with such people.

In 1972 the Home Office research unit made a detailed study of the sentenced male prison population in the South-East of England. It found that 30 per cent. of prisoners were petty or minor offences. It calculated that at least one-third of the prison population could be diverted if suitable alternatives could be provided.

We should allow for the possibility under present day circumstances, that the prison population contains a higher proportion of very serious offenders now than it did in 1972. Even if only 10,000 men and women could safely be dealt with by alternative methods, this would bring an end to overcrowding. However, these calculations take no account of the important point that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made concerning shorter sentences. Many men and women who have committed non-violent crimes could be taken into account in this respect. If the Home Secretary took firm action to shorten sentences, either by legislation or by introducing an early release scheme on the Northern Ireland lines, the numbers in prison could be cut further.

The alternatives to prison have been ably described in the parliamentary all-party penal affairs group's report. I should like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk), who, if I may say so, following my experience in the previous Parliament, has mellowed so much. I fear to take upon myself the mantle that he used to wear of being extreme. The hon. Gentleman has come forward with an impressive report. I do not wish to make him blush too much or lose too many votes by praising him too enthusiastically.

Many petty persistent offenders have practical problems which are bound up with their criminal activities such as homelessness, unemployment, poor literacy, lack of social skills and dependence on drink or drugs. In many areas, voluntary organisations such as NACRO and the Stonham housing association, together with the probation and after-care service, are attempting to meet such problems by providing hostels, housing schemes, employment projects and day centres, and for many such offenders, these schemes, combined with a probation order can and should be used as an alternative to imprisonment.

The Stonham housing association has 70 projects in the pipeline this year and it is slowed down only by the Housing Corporation's bureaucratic system. I wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Mr. Stanley). Meeting him recently, I was relieved to feel that he is determined to reduce the red tape and the long delays in establishing the hostels and helping to provide more direct alternatives. Unfortunately, he tells me that he has practically no money.

This is a great opportunity for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to support the views that he has expressed and to put the money where his mouth is. Perhaps, in his generous, affectionate and affable way, he will say to his hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction "We will do some lease-lend. I have more money than I need expend. If I take Charles Irving's advice and switch from the massive development of costly prison places to invest in the far less expensive alternatives, I shall have a surplus in my accounts." My right hon. Friend has the charm and the ability to say to my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction "We will give you a little more money and we will make full use of the places you provide in much more humane and sensible conditions than are provided through the present over-burdened prison system." Much more use should be made of community service orders. Only 3 per cent. of adults convicted of indictable offences are made subject to them.

It is encouraging to see more attendance centres which have been virtually non-existent. I cannot understand why, following the Expenditure Sub-Committee report and other reports ad nauseam over the years, we fail to emulate many countries in Europe and also New Zealand in introducing an experimental scheme of weekend imprisonment. Many petty offenders could well pay their penalty to the community or the sanctions that society seeks to extract from them by going into a weekend prison on a Friday and coming out on a Monday. It is nothing new.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for introducing this point. Does he not see a difficulty? How would the petty, inadequate offender get to a remote open prison in the countryside? Who would pay? Would it be the taxpayer or would it be an additional penalty upon the offender himself?

I normally never sit down once I have stood up. I have such regard for my hon. Friend that, although I seldom give way, I thought it was worthwhile to sit down to hear his intervention. I made a mistake.

It should be remembered that, in normal circumstances, we are talking of £6,000 a year. It cannot be claimed that a weekend camp will cost anything on that scale. Yet between 1972 and 1974 six open prisons were shut or sold. These had all the facilities that would have provided for weekend imprisonment. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will forgive me. I do not know whether he is shaking his head at me or at the Opposition.

I thought I was keeping it still.

I do not think that there is any opposition. I have more support on the Opposition Benches than I seem to be getting on the Government side.

I received this information from the Home Office yesterday through the noble Lord to whom I am grateful for enlightening me on the position. I do not think the House fully appreciates the situation. Since 1972, six open prisons which would have provided 400 places either have been shut or are in the process of being shut or sold. The argument is that their condition has deteriorated to an extent where they cannot be used. Surely, with the massive captive labour within the prison system, they could be done up. That suggestion might be examined.

The cost of these alternatives would be a fraction of the cost of imprisonment. A community service order costs £7 a week and a probation order £6 a week. The Home Office gives a subsidy for a voluntary hostel place of £550 a year. This must make sense provided we make sure that the public is protected from the serious, violent offenders. In comparison with a massive prison building programme, a policy of reducing the prison population by developing alternatives would save millions of pounds over a period of 10 years. For many minor offenders, it would offer a better chance of preventing them from committing further offences rather than the negative and costly process of imprisonment.

I am not against a prison building programme, but I favour a replacement building programme under which an old, stinking, Victorian prison would have to close as each new prison opens. I favour a programme that would provide better conditions for a smaller number of men and women. If the Home Secretary is prepared to take action along those lines with a determination which his predecessors, for all their good intentions, did not display, he can be assured of strong support from many hon. Members on both sides of the House.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving) on a speech that I should like to have made myself if I had the ability to do so. He raised a number of interesting points. When talking about the prison building programme, he touched on the opposition to the May report. In the few moments that I wish to address the House, I should like to refer to that myself, probably inadequately. The opposition comes from Professor Roy King, and I am sure that the Home Secretary will have read at least some of the evidence that he submitted to the May committee, as well as some of the criticisms that he made of the report, mainly at a conference that I attended on 30 November last year.

Professor King began by criticising the size of the prison population. I go along with everything that has been said about that. It is unarguable that the prison population must be reduced, and we have just heard some startling figures from the hon. Member for Cheltenham which show the area in which we should be moving. I was interested to learn that 40 per cent. of those in prison in Scotland were there for fine defaults. That seems an extraordinarily high figure, and it is surely something that we should change.

Professor King then went into the argument about positive custody, which now seems to be the in-phrase, as opposed to humane containment. I shall not delay the House on this matter, because I do not know all the differences between those two phrases. But Roy King argues that in going for positive custody we seem to be moving away from the idea that people serving prison sentences should perhaps not be in a prison that is close to their home environment, as has been the case in the past. Professor King states:

"Positive custody may sound harmless enough. But 'humane containment', if taken seriously, would be preferable. In time these could become both rights for prisoners and obligations on prison authorities which might actually be enforceable. Positive custody offers no such prospect".

He claims that:

"It is vague and will be as meaningless or confusing for prisoners and staff as was treat- ment and training. It offers no criteria by which success can be evaluated: even the most inhumane conditions could be justified by a statement that we are 'being as positive as we can in the circumstances'."

Those criticisms ought to be answered. I do not expect the right hon. Gentleman to answer them today, and that would not be right because, unfortunately, I will be unable to be present for the winding-up speech. I apologise for that. However, I put these points forward in the hope that either in another place, or at another time, we shall get some answers.

Write him a letter.

I may do that. There is also the question of the dispersal system. As the Home Secretary knows, there are two prisons in the Isle of Wight, Albany and Parkhurst. There is a C wing at Parkhurst. The Expenditure Committee recommended that we should look at this matter and perhaps add a further wing to one or two other dispersal prisons in the country. The present system of moving prisoners around the seven dispersal prisons is extremely expensive, and has led to enormous expenditure on making those prisons secure. I believe that more than £2 millon has been spent on placing the large plastic balloons on the top of the walls at Albany and Parkhurst.

I wonder whether this is the right policy. Lord Mountbatten was certainly against it, although the subsequent report was in favour of it. I think that prisoners prefer to stay in one prison. They do not like being moved about. I also believe that the staff do not like that system. Therefore, we should at least debate this point, because it is extremely costly and it means that many prisoners contained in the dispersal prisons do not require the maximum security that is imposed upon them.

Of course one welcomes improvements to prisons. When I went around an extension to Camp Hill, I was fairly astonished to find that a modern building was designed for four or more to a cell. I want to see better conditions and modernisation within our prisons. I hope that in the process some of the older prisons such as Oxford, which have been re-opened, will be shut. That was the point of my intervention. What scares me stiff is that if we go on building more prisons and providing more places we shall fill them, and we shall not take the positive steps that have already been outlined in this House.

The setting up of the May committee was extremely important. The situation prior to its being set up by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) was extremely dangerous. That took the sting out of the problem. Morale is now much better, but it is not as good as it should be. Too much overtime is still being worked by prison officers. The role of the ancillary services is extremely clouded, and the rules are unclear. There are still a lot of queries about continuous duty credits, and so on. Some of the hours worked by instructors and others, especially when they are called out when an inmate has escaped, are amazingly long. We must give prison officers a more meaningful and fulfilling role, and I hope that changes in the structure will lead to that. I welcome the changes that have been made already, as well as the announcements that have been made today.

I visited the Maze prison in Northern Ireland three weeks ago. I want to pay a tribute to the governor of the Maze and to the prison officers there. They are magnificent men whose morale is amazingly high. It is not generally known in this country that when those prison officers go home they face death and injury, not only from the IRA but also from the para-military Protestant groups. They are some of the best men whom I have been privileged to meet, and I want those views to be put on the record.

I turn finally to prison officer housing. The Government and their predecessors took the right decision to encourage, through the rent allowance system, prison officers to move out of the housing compounds adjoining prisons and to find homes for themselves. That has resulted in a large number of houses being made vacant. I believe that there are between 80 and 100 in the Isle of Wight alone.

I recognise that some of those houses are structurally unsound, but a large number are not. They have now been put on the market for sale, but at the same time, the Home Office is busy evicting ex-prison officers who have left the service, and is putting the obligation to house them on to the local authorities.

The local authority in the Isle of Wight has no more than 12 per cent. of the total housing stock to rent. It is an impossible situation, particularly when prison officers' houses up the road are lying empty.

I appreciate that some of those houses are perhaps too close to the prison in order to be sold or leased. But the Isle of Wight is facing an increasing housing problem. I shall be going back this afternoon to see a lady who is being evicted from a Lord Roberts' home because her husband, an ex-Service man, has died. Another old lady of 75 is also under notice to quit. There is no way in which the local authority can house them, because it does not have any houses available. Yet the prison houses are standing empty. In a way, they represent an indictment, because people are asking "Why cannot we make use of them?". Should not those houses be leased to the local authorities for three or four years in order to improve the situation? I welcome the May report, but some of the comments opposing it should be taken on board.

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this important debate today. I begin by paying a fulsome tribute to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for the way in which he has responded to the May committee recommendations. His statement to the House on 30 April did much to encourage those hon. Members who are deeply concerned about the prisons, and to reassure the House of his personal commitment to seek solutions.

There is no doubt that the prisons are, and will remain for some time, the most difficult and worrying of Home Office problems. For one reason or another the prisons are poised on the edge of crisis, chiefly because at the end of May the prison population rose to more than 44,000, with no easy prospect of relief from overcrowding. There are no simple solutions to the prison problem, or to the more general problem of lawlessness.

For a very long time, since 1963 when the Prison Commission was abolished, and the practice began of the chairman of the prisons board changing about every second year, the prison service has lacked positive leadership and direction.

One sensed that the prison service was drifting in a rudderless fashion. I congratulate the Home Secretary for grasping the nettle of organisational change, as was first suggested in the publication "The Proper Use of Prisons" in September 1977, and for giving the service some real autonomy while allowing it to remain politically and administratively accountable to the Home Secretary. This is a radical and important step, and I am glad that the new headquarters arrangements are now in operation.

I also welcome the continued service of Mr. Dennis Trevelyan, who is a committed prisons man, as director general. He will have the advantage of a strengthened prisons board, which will include the four regional directors and two independent non-executive directors. Those appointments will do much to engender public confidence in the prison service.

I also welcome the fact that the new arrangement includes an independent public relations unit at prison headquarters. That will do much to ensure that the public are better informed on prison matters. That is important, because, for obvious reasons, so much of the prison service takes place—as I know as a former assistant prison governor in two of those Victorian gaols to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving) referred—behind closed doors.

I welcome, too, the Home Secretary's firm commitment to encouraging the courts to impose shorter sentences for the average offender for whom a custodial sentence is appropriate. Let me make it quite clear that I do not regard the shorter sentence as in any way meaning that we are going soft on offenders. Nor, I am sure, does the Home Secretary intend that either. On the contrary, we must face the fact that we have a major crisis of overcrowding in the prisons of England and Wales, and it is an absolute scandal that this situation has been allowed so obviously to build up over recent years. The truth is—here I speak from personal experience in the prisons—that, for the average offender, the impact of imprisonment is most emphatically felt during the first few days or weeks of a sentence. That fact is now well confirmed by recent criminological research, and thus it makes sense to pursue a policy of shorter sentences whenever appropriate, both from a penological point of view and from the standpoint of cost-effectiveness. There are obvious exceptions, such as murder, terrorism, and serious crime involving harm to the innocent. and in the case of robbery where a firearm is used. My only reservation about the shorter sentence policy is whether the courts will play ball. If they do not, I urge my right hon. Friend to give consideration to introducing appropriate legislation to enforce shorter sentences by law. The scandal of overcrowding and the strain it places on the staff cannot be overlooked for long.

Apart from the important decision to go for shorter sentences where appropriate, there is the question of who is in prison and need not, and should not, be there. The recent parliamentary all-party penal affairs group report—"Too Many Prisoners"—has made a number of recommendations about offenders for whom imprisonment is wrong in principle. They include, in particular, mentally disordered offenders, petty inadequates, and fine and maintenance defaulters.

Taking this last category first, urgent steps need to be taken to improve the attachment of earnings procedures, and magistrates—who are required, under section 31 of the Magistrates Courts Act 1952, to take into account the offender's means when determining the level of a fine—should be provided with better information so as to enable the court to impose penalties not only appropriate to the circumstances of the offence but also within the ability of the offender to pay.

It is worrying that mentally disordered offenders should be sent to prison, and for these people the DHSS must be required, as a matter of urgency, to provide the proper facilites for their care and custody. For the petty inadequates—and especially those suffering from alcoholism—greater efforts must be made to encourage a variety of hostel and other accommodation to be provided by the many excellent voluntary organisations.

We must also have the will and the common sense to remove the power to send people to prison for those minor charges where there is no danger to the public. For example, removing prostitutes from prison would diminish the numbers by a daily average of 80, and save about £140 per week per person in costs.

Even if all these ideas were adopted, the plain fact remans that reducing prison numbers would continue to be a difficult problem. Broadly speaking, crime occurs because of the availability of both goods and money to steal. This fact, plus the learning experience of the criminal, that he can commit most crimes with ease and expect to get away with it, fosters dishonesty. An improved detection rate for those crimes that really concern the public should be the objective of the police. Rightly, the actual police strength is being increased, particularly in urban areas, but the police must be effectively deployed if crime is to be detected.

Most important of all is the need to encourage ways of preventing and containing crime at source, since this obviously prevents the whole complicated and expensive saga of police, courts and the social services, from being brought into play.

While there is much that can be done to improve the present prison crisis, I wish I could tell the House from my personal experience that I could see a continuing and sustained reduction in the prison population. Alas, I cannot. We must face the fact that the prison population will remain high for the foreseeable future. Of the total of about 44,000, some 5.000 or 6,000 will be remanded or convicted but unsentenced prisoners.

Some will say that more remanded prisoners should be allowed bail. For some this is true, but we cannot ignore the growing evidence that many offenders on bail go on to commit further crimes.

The heart of the prison crisis is here in London. About one-third of all crime is committed within the Metropolitan Police District. It is significant that of the six male prison establishments in London, the certified normal accommodation is 4,401 and the approximate actual population is about 5,800. In London the overcrowding is at its worst.

On many occasions in the past, consideration has been given to the provision of a new secure prison in central London. This has always come up against the implacable opposition of local borough councils, and Ministers have been extremely reluctant even to consider using their compulsory powers of land acquisition.

This failure to make proper provision for the prison service in London is now costing us dear. I urge my right hon. Friend to take steps now to initiate a major new prison and Crown court complex, in conjunction with the Lord Chancellor, somewhere in the docklands. We have over 5,000 acres ready for development, and a new prison and court complex would require about 20 acres. Not only would it provide the facilities necessary; it would also provide a range of job opportunities in north-east London. If this were done, it would provide the needs of the prison service in Greater London for the next 50 years.

rose—

Order. Perhaps I should indicate that there is one hour and 35 minutes left before the closing speeches. Eleven hon. Members are still waiting to speak. Any speeches of more than 10 minutes will deprive one or more hon. Members of the opportunity to speak.

As the House knows, I have the privilege of being the chairman of the parliamentary all-party penal affairs group to whose report "Too Many Prisoners", published in June, I want to address most of my remarks.

Before doing so, I should like to place on record my appreciation and that of the group for the constructive and helpful attitude that has been exhibited by the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman has always been willing to see us on deputations quickly and has treated us courteously and sometimes even constructively. He has made himself, his Ministers and his officials available to attend meetings of the group and has given the group facilities to visit penal establishments. I place on record the group's appreciation of his constructive and helpful attitude. That is not to say that either I or the group do not or will not criticise him in future.

The report was compiled and published in an attempt, first, to draw attention to the gravity of the situation in our prisons with the overcrowding and intolerable conditions to which many right hon. and hon. Members have referred in the debate.

The words "We now have a crisis which, if immediate action is not taken, will become a catastrophe" were not invented by us. Those words were used a long time ago and have been repeated by successive Home Secretaries and by those working within the penal system.

The group's report was also designed to help the Home Secretary to achieve his stated objective of reducing the number of people in prison and to provide him with clearly identifiable practical means by which this could be achieved. I think that is achieved by the 48 recommendations in our report.

I want to talk about the four main sections of those recommendations. By far the most important, which has been referred to in enthusiastic terms by every speaker in the debate, is the demand for a reduction in the length of prison sentences. Our aim is shared by the May committee, the Expenditure Committee, the Advisory Council on the Penal System, the Justices' Clerks' Society, the Magistrates' Association and the Home Secretary himself. We all agree on the need to reduce the length of prison sentences. We differ on the means by which that reduction can be achieved.

We agree with the Advisory Council on the Penal System, in its interim report in 1977, that long sentences, particularly in the middle and lower ranges, have no significant impact on reconviction rates and do a disservice both to the offender and to society as a whole. The May committee unanimously and emphatically endorsed that statement by the Advisory Council on the Penal System.

There is overwhelming and clear evidence against the efficacy, still less the justice, of the excessively long prison sentences through all the ranges which are currently being imposed by the courts. We were not impressed by the arguments constantly put forward by the Home Secretary and his predecessors that the way to deal with this matter is by persuasion and exhortation directed at the judiciary. I know that the Home Secretary may sincerely believe that, though I suspect that his reasons for advancing that argument have more to do with his private conversations with members of the judiciary and their reactions to any legislation. But I think that he will accept that the House has a responsibility to legislate and to determine the appropriate length of sentence and that it is for the judges to interpret and to use their discretion within the range determined by Parliament. If Parliament, as has been expressed in the debate, has decided that the length of sentences imposed by judges is excessive, Parliament has the right, the duty and the responsibility to ensure that those sentence maxima are reduced without in any way inhibiting judicial discretion.

We are not impressed by the right hon. Gentleman's argument that it would be more appropriate—I think that on one occasion he said that it would be a constitutional procedure—to go along the path that he has chosen. We would be more impressed if such exhortations in the past—as the right hon. Gentleman is well aware, they are not new—had achieved the impact that he is now seeking. The plain fact is that sentences are now a third longer than they were 10 years ago. Page 44, paragraph 178, of the parliamentary all-party penal affairs group's report entitled "Too Many Prisoners" recommends:

"to achieve a significant reduction in sentence lengths the powers of the courts must be restricted by legislation. We propose the two-tier sentencing structure similar to that proposed in 1978 by the Advisory Council on the Penal System but with certain modifications. 'Ordinary' offenders should be subject to new lower maximum penalties fixed somewhere below the point which reflects the existing sentencing practice. Exceptional offenders should be eligible for sentences above these maxima but subject to a further maximum determinant sentence varying with the offence but in no case exceeding 10 or 12 years. Life sentences would remain available for certain offences."

The evidence that we have had in the few months since the publication of the May report demonstrates clearly that eventually the Home Secretary will have to grasp what I accept is a difficult nettle and bring proposed legislation to the House as a means of reducing the length of sentences.

There has been a conditional release scheme in operation in Northern Ireland since 1976. That could be applied as an immediate expedient or contingency measure within the present system. The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, and my right hon. and hon. Friends when they were in Government, have paid testimony to the effectiveness of the scheme and to the fact that it is working reasonably and well. Those who are released after 50 per cent. remission do not have a higher reconviction rate than those who serve their whole sentences.

Why cannot we take good practice which has already been established in one part of the United Kingdom and which has shown itself to be successful, and transplant it in England and Wales? That would have an important impact immediately on the numbers serving prison sentences. It is a conditional release scheme, and I emphasise "conditional". It would not be a danger to the public and it might produce some reduction in the size of the prison population.

The Home Secretary should say how long he will give the judges to come good on this issue. What sentence has he given them? Do they have six months, nine months or a year to show that they are seized of the importance of reducing sentences? There has been unanimity in the House so far—there is unanimity outside—that what is lacking is the judicial will to implement a reduction of sentences in practice.

The second major series of recommendations of the report entitled "Too Many Prisoners" dealt with petty persistent offenders, a topic that has been admirably and lucidly dealt with by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving). The report of the Home Office that reviewed criminal justice policy in 1976 observed that a significant reduction in the prison population could be achieved by diverting from the penal system all those who are regarded as petty persistent offenders and of no danger to the public.

We have made detailed and substantial recommendations to increase the facilities for day care, for hostels and for employment-related schemes, all of which would be tied to a sentence of the court. We contend that that is an adequate way of dealing with many who are generally referred to as socially inadequate rather than as dangerous or as a serious threat to the community. They would properly and more constructively be dealt with in a more positive manner within the community than in our expensive and obsolescent penal system.

We also made detailed recommendations about reducing the number of fine and maintenance defaulters, and those in prison under the Immigration Act. Like the previous Labour Government, the Home Secretary does not accept the argument that I accept, which was first put forward by the Finer committee. The Finer committee said that the imprisonment of fine and maintenance defaulters was an "essay in social futility".

Just as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) did when he was in office, the Home Secretary relies on inadequate and outdated research evidence which was conducted six years ago. However, that is an argument that can be debated on another occasion. We suggested many ways in which the numbers of fine and maintenance defaulters in prison could be reduced substantially. We also made recommendations about the greater and continuing use of the successful community service order scheme. The report "Too Many Prisoners" recommended that there should be a national network of senior attendance centres. We also suggested that the absurd and unnecessary prohibition that prevents those who have had a custodial sentence from being sentenced to a senior attendance centre should be eliminated.

The Home Secretary could quickly do many other things, which would have an immediate and effective impact on the prison population. The worrying thing is that he, like his predecessors, makes all the right noises and says all the right things. He gets the congratulations and applause that rightly follow, yet very little happens by way of significant action. We are in danger of saying the right things, and of saying that we have had a wonderful and constructive debate today, without anything much happening afterwards. That has been the result of the debates held during this Parliament and also the result of debates held during the past five years. Nothing significant or important has been done for the prison population.

I should like the Home Secretary to say that he shares our sense of urgency about the way in which petty persistant offenders are dealt with. I should be unreasonable if I were to ask him to reply to the detailed points and specific recommendations that were made in the report of the all-party penal affairs group. He has already agreed to meet members of the group in the autumn, in order to discuss the programme for the implementation of some of its recommendations.

The right hon. Gentleman has a duty to say clearly and specifically that he accepts our sense of urgency and the need to develop options to custodial sentences. I hope that he will tell us that that sense of urgency will be matched by the implementation of specific and desirable recommendations. A worrying phrase occurs in the White Paper's response to the Expenditure Committee. If I remember correctly, it says that, even if all petty offenders were removed from prison, it would not have a significant impact on overcrowding. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that phrase. It conflicts with the study that the Home Office research unit made of the prison population in the South-East. Indeed, that study has been referred to by the hon. Member for Cheltenham. Its report said that it would be possible to divert about 30 per cent. of the prison population in that catchment area. Which of the two views is correct? Are we to believe the report of the Home Office research unit, or are we to believe the White Paper? There seems to be a discrepancy. The evidence at my disposal supports the Home Office research unit, rather than the statement in the White Paper.

The third section of recommendations dealt with those for whom prison is regarded as wrong in principle. That means the mentally disordered and ill, alcoholics and those who are dependent on drugs. It is wrong and indefensible that mentally disordered people should be in prison. No hon. Member has ever defended the imprisonment of the mentally ill. Everyone has clearly and openly said that imprisonment is inappropriate and that such people should be in hospitals, where they can receive the proper nursing and medical treatment. They are in prison, not because someone wants to put them there, but because successive Governments have failed to provide the resources for regional secure units, or because hospitals, doctors, consultants, nurses and ancillary staff in National Health Service hospitals have refused to accept mentally ill offenders, whom they regard as potentially violent or disruptive. This is quite disgraceful and indefensible and it is no good this Government doing what the previous Government did. All Governments say with fine, trenchant words that they are concerned about the issue, that they think that it is a disgrace and a scandal and that they want to do something about it, but there is no evidence of any action except the setting-up of yet another research study to find out why there is a problem in transferring the mentally ill from prison to hospital.

We know why there is a problem. The Butler committee was set up and reported in 1974 specifically to deal with that. That points clearly to the reasons for the difficulties. We know the problem but we have not tackled it because it is controversial. Yet, if we are serious about reducing the prison population and if we are particularly serious about taking out of the system those who should not be there in the first place, then the mentally ill and the mentally disordered are a prime and important segment of that population. They should be dealt with, if for no other reason, on straightforward, simple, humanitarian grounds. Their proper place is in hospital, not in prison.

The same applies to a lesser extent to those who are in prison for failing to pay fines for drunkenness. We all accept that they are sick, not bad. They need treatment, not punishment. They should be in detoxification centres, hospitals or hostels rather than being allowed to go through the circle of prison, release, police pick-up, courts, fine and prison. We have said all these things in the past and they are being said again today. We want a much more specific commitment from the Government to remove these individuals from penal establishments.

The fourth and final section deals with prisoners who are on remand. We firmly believe that there are far too many people who are held on remand and that far too many of those who need to be held on remind in custody are held for too long a period. In the first case it is a fact, as the May committee pointed out, that 44 per cent. of those held on remand in custody are not subsequently given prison sentences. It should be a cause for concern that people who are eventually found not guilty or who have committed an offence not serious enough in the eyes of the court to warrant a prison sentence, should, nevertheless, have spent on some occasions weeks, if not months, in prison serving what is in effect a prison sentence. The recommendations that my Committee made about the duty solicitors scheme, the national scheme of legal aid, and legal proceedings against a refusal of bail being simplified and being made more effective, could help to reduce the unnecessary remands in custody of a large number of people.

Equally, there is cause for concern about those who, for the protection of the public, are quite properly held on remand in custody but who spend an inordinate and unnecessary length of time awaiting trial. A reference has been made to the 110-day rule in Scotland: it is not possible or permissible to hold a person in custody on remand for more than 110 days After that period, if the case has not been brought to court, all the charges are dropped, the individual is released and that case cannot be proceeded with on a subsequent occasion. If that can happen effectively and successfully in Scotland, there is no reason why the same principle cannot be applied in England and Wales. On the last count that the Home Office conducted there were 900 men and women who had been held in custody on remand in England and Wales for longer than 110 days. They would not have been still held on remand—technically innocent—had they been in Scottish prisons.

Although the Home Secretary agreed earlier from a sedentary position that the way in which remand prisoners are treated is a scandal—both in terms of those who are on remand and who should not be, and in terms of the length of time spent in custody—not enough is being done to reduce the numbers on remand and to reduce the length of time for those awaiting trial. A lot can be done. Small, undramatic and not very prepossessing recommendations are made in the report, but each one could have at least a marginal impact on reducing the number of prisoners and length of time that people are properly and necessarily held in prison.

In conclusion, the subject of the penal system and prisons generally does not figure centrally in public debate. It is not an important subject, a great priority in the House or a major priority of this Government, witness this debate, nine months after the publication of the May report, taking place on a Friday and interrupted by a statement on another important and significant issue. It is not a subject that is popular with the general public. It is not a topic on which votes will be easily garnered or for which there is a great deal of sympathy or public support. It is nevetheless extremely important. I would say that it is crucial.

About 44,000 men, women and schoolchildren are in prison today in our name. We are responsible for them. If it is not a popular issue, which does not centrally feature in debate outside the House, it is even more important that this House should take responsibility for ensuring that only the right people are in prison for the right period of time. This House must take responsibility for doing what is right. We have not done so in the past. It is wrong to put the mentally ill, mentally disordered, the drug-dependent, prostitutes, maintenance defaulters or other categories of individual in prison. We all agree that it is wrong. It is time, therefore, that the Home Secretary began to do what is right. He is a decent and civilised man. He makes the right noises. Let him now take the right action.

The whole House shares the sincere concern of the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk).

I wish to speak from my observations of the prison in Canterbury. It is squeezed between the ruins of St. Augustine's abbey, where Christianity arrived in this country, and the bright new Christ-church teacher training college. Opposite is the grammar school. Beneath the prison walls is the oldest parish church in England, St. Martin's. One hurries past the prison walls on the other side of the road. I confess that that is the natural reaction to a prison set in the beautiful surroundings of a medieval town.

The May report describes it as a local prison, pre-1930. It was built in 1808 as a naval prison. The report describes its future potential as poor, and gives its certified normal occupation of accommodation as 246. This morning I telephoned the governor. He refused to tell me the present population, because, as a new governor, he did not know me personally and he could not be sure that I was an outside body. That was fair. Whenever I have been there, the population has never been less than 450.

I have sometimes visited my temporary constituents in that prison. It is depressing inside. I hope that the House will not laugh when I say that there is an oppressive feeling of being shut away from life. High walls and iron bars do make a cage. It is clean, but it is airless. The windows are high and the sky is a long way away, and it smells of urine. It is an oasis of brick and stone, but, unlike the real thing, nothing seems to grow there.

However, it is not all gloom and sadness. There are some bright parts, such as the library and its use by the inmates and the studio and the paintings and art work produced. I speak well of the kitchens, too. I have tasted the meals. They are not bad. The workshops are not inspiring. Workshops in which mailbags are made are not inspiring places. But there are other workshops where the inmates make clothes. These are a little better, because the very colour and the nature of the product being made means more attractive and interesting work.

The hospital looks quite good. As one who has served for many years in the Health Service, I must say that the hospital, small though it is, compares very well with some hospitals outside. Incidentally, it is to the hospital that convicted murderers go first of all for their first two or three weeks. When I was last in this small prison, there were about eight or nine convicted murderers there. At another time I visited the prison, years back, there were nothing like so many murderers there, but I can draw no conclusion from that.

I am not alone in having this depressing view of a local prison. May speaks of the

"bleak conditions of local prisons."

The report says

"the worst prisons are very bad indeed."

I would not put Canterbury in that class. The old buildings—they are very old—are well kept and well painted, and even brightly painted. A lot has been done to make the best of an old building, albeit a building designed for another age and another approach to a social problem. There is even music-while-you-work. The inmates even have to endure Mr. Jimmy Young—and they cannot switch him off.

An old building such as this cannot be ideal even for the offenders, who are often in for lesser offences, as we have heard today, or on remand. But even if we thought that it is wrong to pamper prisoners with a brighter and better building, it is not right for those who have to spend much longer in such a place—the prison staff. Representatives of the Prison Officers Association and prison staff come to see me at my surgeries regularly. I have been impressed by these prison officers. Canterbury is not a prison which has been giving many problems. I have not found prison officers downhearted when I have met them. They seem to make up for their drab surroundings by a cheerful attitude and by their general approach to their job and to the inmates.

I have been very impressed by their approach to the inmates. Admittedly, some prison officers look like the toughest sergeant major one ever saw; but even the toughest sergeant major one ever saw is sometimes helpful to the youngest new recruit in the Army, and I have seen such an approach from prison officers to the newest recruit of inmates in the prison.

I have been impressed by the inmates, too. Subdued they may be—but not surrendered. Of course, I cannot make more than a superficial comment, because I have not made a study of them. But one thing depressed me. That was how young they are today.

What of the cells? One of the good things about May is that it is an illustrated report. The illustrations of cells are exactly like the cells in Canterbury prison. There is only one word that I can use to describe them—grim. Of course, there are many in Canterbury living two or three to a cell. As has been said, this is wrong, and we must not go on ignoring it—although when I spoke to prisoners living three to a cell, they did not complain. I pressed them on this point. Perhaps they did not complain because of the presence of prison officers with me, but I do not think so. I think that they sometimes appreciated the companionship of three to a cell rather than being on their own, particularly in their first days in prison. The May committee reports that in nine years the number of inmates sleeping two or three to a cell has risen from 10,500 to more than 16,000. The figure is even higher now.

When I last visited Canterbury prison, I saw some mentally disordered patients—I used the word "patients" through a slip of the tongue, but that is what they are. They are offenders, but they are also ill, and prison officers told me that those men should be in psychiatric hospitals, being treated for being ill and not being punished for being offenders.

We know from the sensitive and instructive speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving) that the vague reference in the May report to "some hundreds" of mentally disordered inmates is about 400 at any one time. The South-East Thames regional health authority, on which I serve, proposes to design two regional secure units, each to take 30 such patients. We are awaiting sanction to go ahead. I recently arranged for a display of such work in the House.

Prison officers have been to see me about pay. The remuneration of prison officers could not be described as bad, but I am staggered by the system of remunerating them. They are dependent on overtime to a fantastic degree. An average of 37 per cent. of a prison officer's pay is represented by overtime—12 hours on top of a 40-hour week. The May committee refers to the "peculiar reliance" on overtime and to the fact that there are "overtime bandits" who manipulate their work so that they get as much overtime as possible. That must have a bad effect on the management of the service and on the relationship between staff and management.

The most extraordinary anomalies exist, as I have found from talking to the governor at Canterbury and prison officers of various grades. I could not believe those anomalies until I read them in the May report. The governor said that officers were paid more than he received. Many officers earn more than a governor, because governors and senior prison officers do not receive overtime payments. It does not pay a middle grade prison officer to get promoted. The figures are remarkable. According to the May report, the most junior prison officer can earn, on average, £122 a week, while an assistant governor grade II can earn only—I pause for effect—£100 a week, £22 a week less for being the boss. A class I assistant governor does a little better and gets £127 a week. On the other hand, a senior officer can earn £145 a week and a principal officer can make £153 a week. But, as we go up the scale, overtime payments cease and the next grade, chief officer class II, gets £126 a week—less than the senior and principal officers below him.

The most senior rank below governor, chief officer, class I, gets only £138 a week, compared with the £145 and £153 of the lower grades who work for him. On the basis of my experience of trying to run industry, I cannot understand how one can run a prison service when such anomalies exist.

Prison officers have complained to me about some of the implications of the May report. They feel strongly about the ILA—the inconvenience locality allowance—which the May committee recommends should not be retained. I have written to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about this matter. After studying the report, I am inclined to agree with May that perhaps it is illogical today to continue with an allowance of a few pounds a week for the inconvenience of being in a remote locality. But I also agree with the report up to the hilt when it says that the allowance should be phased out by negotiation. That is the very important qualification that I would make.

We heard from the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) the reservation that we should be careful about the little irritants that we might cause the staff by taking away something, which could cause the pot to boil over and cause trouble. The allowance was a traditional extra, and if it goes it should be balanced by some recompense.

May said that transfers should no longer be carried out at the public expense. I do not agree. I think that transfer from inconvenient outstations should continue to be at the public expense. Otherwise, prison officers might feel themselves condemned to stay somewhere that is miles from anywhere when they would like to return to a place that is near schools for their children and centres of entertainment for their families, friends and so on. Transfer at the public expense should be retained.

The officers feel that May neglected thoroughly to study the problem of rent allowances and I agree. The report is very weak on the subject It says nothing other than that the matter requires further consideration. I pass the ball straight back to my right hon. Friend and say that it certainly does. I am amazed that May did not study the police system in detail. Why should a police constable receive £18.20 a week rent allowance when in the same town, Canterbury, a prison officer receives only £11·30?

Another matter that officers feel strongly about is complaints by inmates. The officers feel a real irritation over this problem. If an officer is suspended as a result of a complaint by an inmate, he can draw only his basic pay. With no overtime, he loses 37 per cent. of his remuneration at once because of the complaint. Inmates know a thing or two. They know that they can deprive of his overtime pay an officer they have it in for, reducing him to basic pay. What is more, they know that even when the officer is found to be not guilty and is reinstated, he gets no back pay for the overtime that he might have worked if he had not been suspended. Inmates are using this anomaly to work on prison officers. The matter should be investigated.

The report is most important, and I have found it fascinating reading. It is on a social problem that we do not think enough about. The report is a window on to a closed world. We should all, in Parliament and in the country, take a look inside. We need to know what prison life is like for offenders and the officers in charge of them.

I said in opening that a prison in Canterbury was like an oasis of brick and stone. That is misleading. It is the other way round. The prison is the desert, and it is we who are in the oasis, where life exists, where plants grow and where people laugh. However much we may clamour for law and order and stiffer punishments, and whatever is done and must be done to keep our prisons secure and society safe, we still have a duty, a moral duty, to consider what it is like to be inside. If we do not like what we see, we must speak out and make our voices heard.

rose—

There remain just over 55 minutes for Back-Bench speeches. Seven hon. Members would like to contribute to the debate. I leave it in hon. Members' hands.

I shall be as brief as I can. I am pleased to speak after the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) because, although I usually disagree with him on health matters, I agreed with much of what he said about the prison service.

I wish to talk about the prison in my constituency, Brixton. Unlike Canterbury prison, it was singled out by the May committee as being particularly bad. On page 124 the committee states:

"To put it baldly and without equivocation but choosing our words carefully nonetheless, we think that the worst prisons are very bad indeed … At the bottom are most of the urban Victorian local prisons i.e. those that are responsible for remand and trial prisoners. Of the ones we have seen, Birmingham, Bristol, Brixton and Liverpool deserve special mention."

Brixton is the main remand prison for London. The dreadful conditions there are suffered by men who have either not been convicted or have not been sentenced for any offence. About 44 per cent. of people remanded in custody will be found not guilty or receive a non-custodial sentence.

Brixton was built for fewer than 700 prisoners. This morning more than 1,100 prisoners are in Brixton. They go in and out at the rate of more than 100 a day when the courts are sitting. The reason for the overcrowding is not necessarily that more people are being remanded but the long delays before a trial and the dragging out of trials. The biggest reduction in the prison population at Brixton could be made by swifter trials.

Increased productivity by the legal profession would be a great help. The average delay in coming to trial in London is five months. We should take seriously the proposal that we should copy the Scottish model. In Scotland a remanded man or woman is set free if not brought to trial within 110 days.

I agree with the hon. Member for Canterbury that overcrowding is not just a matter of too many to a cell. Many of the cells were built by the Victorians as single cells because isolation was deemed to be an extra part of the punishment. The real problem in Brixton is the stress and strain on the facilities caused by overcrowding. There is inadequate sanitation and cramped provision for family and legal visits. Recreation and education facilities are restricted. That is made worse by the extra security required because of the high proportion of category A prisoner on remand. Many of them are on terrorist charges. When I last visited the prison there were 53 category A prisoners. Only Wakefield has more. The extra security affects all the prisoners, not only the high risk prisoners. The education block at Brixton cannot be used because it is outside the secure perimeter and there are not enough staff to make it usable and to maintain security.

Parts of Brixton, particularly F wing, are falling down. Some of the buildings were built before Queen Victoria was born and are way beyond their useful life. It is disturbing that 1,000 men, who are all innocent until proved guilty under British law, should be confined in such conditions.

Another 600 people share the conditions—the prison staff. They are there not just for a few months but for much of their working lives. Their recreation and trade union facilities are cramped and inadequate. They have to deal with the tensions and strains created by the overcrowding and poor facilities. A senior officer said yesterday "I am offended that the State should use me to deny innocent men their rights to cleanliness and human dignity."

Housing is also a problem for prison officers in London generally. A single man working at Brixton receives a rent allowance of £8.42 a week. That is totally inadequate in South London where lodgings, if they are obtainable, cost at least three times that amount. The men who manage to buy a house have to work massive amounts of overtime to pay their mortgage. They have a choice of housing their families properly or of seeing them for a reasonable time. They cannot do both. It will get worse. Staffing at Brixton is to be increased over the next year by up to 200 more officers to service new courts. Yet the Home Office has refused to provide a single further quarter for prison officers stationed at Brixton. Although it is selling off prison quarters in other parts of the country, as the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) indicated, presumably at a considerable gain to the Exchequer, it is refusing to replace them in places where they are needed, such as London.

We have to examine the May report and the Government's reaction to see how the problems of prisons such as Brixton are affected. The reaction of those in the prison service to whom I have spoken is that the report will do precious little. It is dismissed as the "dis-May report". It has not solved the problems of pay, and the debate has clearly exposed the fallacy that prison officers want to work the long hours that they now undertake. Nor has it solved the problem of the long hours of escort duty of prison officers accompanying prisoners on remand to courts all over the South of England.

The prison service seems disappointed with the reaction of the Government so far. It is possible to say that all recent Governments have failed to tackle the wider problems of prisons and the particular problems of remand prisoners. But this Government have a particular responsibility because of their emphasis, in speeches and manifestos, on law and order. The prison service seems crucial in determining whether the punishments meted out in the interests of law and order are just, or inhumane and brutal. The prisons seem to become the Cinderella of the law and order services.

The Government have taken steps, however much the Opposition may not like them, to give special preference to the Armed Services and the police in terms of expenditure when cuts are taking place elsewhere. Little has been done so far for the prison service. I hope that the Minister of State will be able to announce, although possibly not today, what action the Government intend to take on the May report. We need a commitment to a new remand prison for London, possibly in the docklands. This should be high in the building programme. Such a prison is not open to the objection that it would simply be filled up, as might happen with a longer-term prison. Attached to it should be a major new court building to eliminate the long journeys and the waste of time of prison officers, which also involve massive expense.

Some measures are required to be taken by the Law Officers and the legal profession to cut down the delays in the beginning and the finishing of criminal trials in London. I see that the parliamentary lawyers' party is well represented. It could get down to some work on this matter.

A rigorously liberal application of the Bail Act by magistrates is needed, together with the provision of more bail hostels. A period of silence would be welcome from those who say that too many people are going out on bail. There must be a review of the housing allowance system and the provision of quarters for prison officers in London.

I believe that the May report, and the others that have been mentioned, provide an opportunity for a real commitment to steady change. But there seems to be a fear among those who are more deeply involved in the prison service than I am that the intention of the May report was to buy some time because of the crisis which then existed. That time has been bought, but one member of the service has told me that they will not fall for it again, and that what they now want is action.

If we do not see the sort of action that has been advocated from both sides of the House today, there is the danger that another crisis—brought about by more disruptive industrial action or by further riots such as those that occurred at Hull—is the only way in which change will occur. I hope that the Government, both in the Minister's reply today and in their later actions, will show that those fears are unfounded.

The hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr. Tilley) has shown great concern for the state of our prisons today, particularly for the one in Brixton, in his constituency.

This is one of the most worrying of our present-day problems, and I congratulate Mr. Justice May and the members of his committee on the proposals that they have produced to try to solve this crisis. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on accepting those proposals.

The present state of our prisons, as I think we all agree, and as the May committee found, is a disgrace. It is a scandal that has become a crisis. It is an affront to the national conscience, and it is a danger to society. If today's debate has established nothing else, it has shown that on both sides of the House there is full agreement that the prime reason for the crisis is overcrowding. That overcrowding has left us with a crisis that cannot be contained indefinitely with any certainty or safety. I should not like to predict how long we can continue with a prison population of over 44,000.

We have, by way of options to deal with the crisis, the possibility of building more prisons, which I am happy to know that my right hon. Friend has decided to do. There is also the option of reducing the prison population by reducing the sentences that send offenders there. It is interesting to notice that most sentences imposed on offenders are short. For example, in 1978, 33,000 out of 44,000 sentences were of 12 months or less. Only 1,072 sentences were for periods of imprisonment of four years or more. Therefore, there is safe and ample room for manoeuvre in respect of short sentences.

I should like to repeat what many hon. Members have already said. No one should misinterpret either this debate or the Government's determination to reduce our prison population to be a deflection from a determination to ensure that in proper cases we maintain our system of imposing long and appropriate sentences of imprisonment, especially for serious and violent crimes.

How should we deal with the problem of imposing shorter sentences? There are two temptations which I urge my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to resist at all costs. One is the improper use of the parole board, although I am not suggesting that my right hon. Friend is ever likely to fall for that temptation. As a result of the activities of the parole board, the Government are saved the expense of building five or six prisons which would have to be built to contain the number of prisoners who are now on licence. I am sure that the parole board would resent any misuse of its services and the way in which it exercises its powers.

The other question is how we can persuade our judges and whether we can rely on the decision to ensure that shorter sentences are imposed. There is little, if any, difference between a 12-month and a six-month sentence or a six-month and a three-month sentence as a punishment for the first offender for a petty or nonviolent crime.

We are fortunate in having had Lord Lane appointed to the office of Lord Chief Justice of England. He has put forward his views through judgments in the Court of Appeal, in the criminal division, which will have a profound effect on the judicial attitude to shorter sentences. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary read out one of the judgments that Lord Lane recently gave. I shall read another. In the course of a recent judgment Lord Lane said:

"Courts should ensure that if an immediate prison sentence was inevitable it had to be as short as possible."

I believe that we can rely on members of our judiciary to take notice of advice such as that.

I say in all earnestness to the House and to the Home Secretary "Please do not be tempted into introducing legislation to effect shorter sentences when you can rely on the good sense, judgment and experience of the judiciary to do it for you." Not only would it be resented by the judiciary; it would be resented with a sense of outrage by the people in the country if it was thought that Parliament was trying to fetter the discretion of the judiciary. I believe that the people would far rather trust our judges than our Members of Parliament to decide proper and appropriate sentences for criminal offences. Therefore, I hope that the judiciary will listen to the advice that has been given from the court of appeal.

We must reduce the prison population. The difficulties of doing so were illustrated by the Minister of State when he said in a speech some time ago that, if we were to cut by one-sixth all the short-term and medium-term sentences, in three years we would reduce the prison population by only 2,000. If we were to cut all the short-term and medium-term sentences by one-sixth, and if we were to remove from our prisons the mentally ill, the inadequate, the drunks, the fine defaulters—all the categories that we feel ought not to be there—the total would be only 5,000. That would be just about sufficient to enable the authorities to implement the recommendations of the May committee for the improvement of sanitary facilities.

That is the measure of the problem. I feel sure that all those who feel seriously about it will wish to give my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Government full support in what they are doing to try to solve it.

I start with a simple appeal to the Minister of State, and I hope that he will pass it on to the Home Secretary. It is that before he and his right hon. Friend take any action on this matter they will read the speech of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes). In a very short speech, the hon. Lady showed far more insight into and understanding of the problem than I have heard for a very long time. If the Minister and the Home Secretary were to act on the hon. Lady's speech, we might make much more progress than I would have dreamt possible otherwise.

Prison officers, probation officers, prisoners, social workers, and most other people associated with penal policy, have been disappointed by the May report, and disappointed by the Government's reaction to it. I am in regular and frequent touch with people from all those groups.

I do not in any way criticise the many very good recommendations and very good intentions expressed in the report but it does not in any way express the sense of urgency that the problem requires. The hon. Member for Drake put her finger on the problem. We do not have time. We have a crisis, and it is no wonder that prison officers feel bitterly let down by Governments—previous Governments as well as this one—because we have not listened to them and responded to their needs, or at best we have listened to them but we have not heard. That is a fundamental criticism.

The problem is crime, and it is very simple to take the popular public attitude as to its cause. We all know that crime has many causes, among them unemployment and "parenting". Two of the most important aspects of the latter are love and consistency. But it is very difficult to be consistent when living in a high-rise block of flats, with the children either playing in the flat all day or down below, where they cannot be disciplined and where they cannot learn the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. So the urban environment is important.

When people say that crime must be reduced, surely we must say that something must be done about the consumption of alcohol. The rate of consumption of alcohol is now closely associated with the rise in crimes of violence. If the people are to accept a high level of alcohol consumption, they will have to accept a high level of crime.

We also have to consider the type of society that we want. Recently, members of the special patrol group were put into the London Underground to clear up crime. I am not against clearing up crime in the London Underground. What worries me is that the method is horribly reminiscent of that portrayed in Stanley Kubrick's film "A Clockwork Orange". We ought to be thinking about getting back to a more humane system. Crime on the London Underground could, for example, be reduced by having more staff on Underground stations.

Punishment is accepted by people. Probation officers, social workers and others accept that punishment is important. I also accept that. Above all, prisoners often understand punishment far more than they understand treatment or attempts to be understanding, sympathetic, and so on. But the punishment must be realistic, and our prison system is not in any sense realistic. Everybody here has said that, and it is demon-stated fundamentally by research.

We know that the best deterrent to crime is the fear of being caught, not just by the number of policemen, but by the type of policing. Here I put in an appeal for community policing. I think, too, that we should think about the age of police officers. This is important in terms of experience.

We know that short sentences are the most effective in terms of the shock created. Why is that? We can split a prison sentence into three parts. The first part is the shock, the horror, of going in. I am referring to those who have not been in prison before or who perhaps have been in only once. The shock and horror are immediate and they last for a couple of days or sometimes for a week or two weeks. After that one slips into the second phase of adjusting to the institution. The third stage is where anxiety arises again and the person concerned has to face the idea of coming out, meeting his family, getting a job and so on. Those three phases of prison sentences are well known.

I can make hon. Members and people outside most aware of this position by drawing an analogy with admission to hospital as an emergency. There is the immediate shock of going in. After that the patient adjusts to being in hospital and then he worries about coming out and getting back into his old position in society.

If we want maximum impact, we should go for short sentences. In some cases it will be a matter of days. If the crime is not serious, there is much to be said for imposing a short sentence.

Why is it difficult? One reason is the so-called public attitude. I know all about that. I am frequently labelled as a "softy" in society. We have failed fundamentally in tackling this problem because we have not given enough thought to the problems of the victim. It is important to consider the victim if we are to achieve penal reform.

The majority of people in our prisons are working class in the Registrar-General's definition of social classes IV and V. I shall come back to that point. What is frequently forgotten is that the vast majority of victims are also from those two groups. That is because they are affected more dramatically by crime. They are not insured. Their houses and flats are more vulnerable to breakins, and so on. That is the problem to which we must respond. We can respond not only by having more generous compensation schemes, but by developing victim support schemes in areas in which such schemes have not been developed. They are particularly important and should be given a boost.

The Home Secretary said that he wanted to try reducing the length of sentences by voluntary means. I have heard it all before. That is why prison officers, probation officers and others concerned with penal reform are cynical. It is not people such as me who make them cynical.

I recall that in 1972 or 1973, at the annual conference of the probation officers, the Home Secretary, in answer to a question, accepted that we might have to reduce the length of prison sentences. This idea has been around for years, but no one has acted on it. Again, the feeling outside by those who have to deal with the problem is that people listen but do not hear or respond.

I am willing to help with any voluntary effort. But how long must we wait before we take our responsibilities seriously? The hon. and learned Member for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner) said that it would be resented if the Government were to step in and interfere with the judiciary. It is an abdication of responsibility by the Government and the House not to change the law when it is necessary. It is necessary to change the law now because, whether we defend prisoners, prison officers or anyone else, we must recognise that there is a crisis. By that I mean that, unless we do something soon—I get no joy from saying this; I have said it before and have been proved right an uncomfortable number of times—the riots will not only continue, but sooner or later lives will be lost or more people will be injured, whether prison officers or prisoners.

Does my hon. Friend agree that admirable as the remarks of the Lord Chief Justice and others may be, which were referred to by the hon. and learned Member for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner), and accepting them, as I am sure we all do, as being a genuine effort to persuade the whole width of the judiciary—magistrates as well as judges—to reduce the length of prison sentences, the pressures upon the judiciary from the press and others are so great that it needs to be fortified by what we do in this place? What we do here has a great influence on the way that it is likely to think.

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who with his great experience has expressed the situation so felicitously. I know that it is not popular in an area such as the one that I represent to say some of the things that I have been saying. If it costs me votes, so be it. I know that it is the right thing to do. It is an issue that we must face. We must not duck it as I fear the hon. and learned Member for South Fylde was suggesting, although I am sure that he advanced his arguments with the best of intentions. It is an issue that we have been ducking for too long.

We must aim for a long-term ideal. That ideal is to reserve prisons for those who use violence, threaten to do so or indulge in certain other serious offences that threaten the fabric of society—for example, large-scale corruption. Our aim must be to get out of our prisons those who do not fall into those categories.

I turn briefly to the problems of the working class in prison. Why is it that there are more prisoners from the two class groups that I have described than from other groups? That is not because they are more wicked or anything like that. The fact is that laws impinge more heavily upon them. To deprive people of their liberty for offences against property is to enter a minefield of double standards.

If there were a police raid on the House next week and every Member's books were checked to ascertain whether there had been what is called "white collar crime", I am sure that the same problems would emerge as those that are uncovered when employees are searched before leaving a factory to discover whether they have stolen anything on their employer's premises. However, in one situation the individual is more likely to be caught and sent to prison.

That is the difference, and that is why we should return to the position of the original Utilitarians and Victorians. They argued that people should be deprived of their liberty as a punishment and no more than that, and that it should be done as a measure of last resort. Given that it is a minefield of double standards, as I have suggested, it should not be done lightly when there are alternatives that are not only cheaper but give something back to the community—for example, community service orders and compensation.

Reducing the prison population will not solve the problem overnight. However, it will reduce the immediate impact of the problem. The House recognises that there is a crisis and that lives are at risk. Surely we have a duty to make an immediate impact on the problem.

Prison cells are often about 8 ft by 13 ft. They are often occupied by three prisoners. There is no sanitation and no water. Prisoners go to the toilet during the night and they slop out in the morning. There is a long queue in a Victorian prison. The toilets are not capable of dealing with the amount of sewage put into them and they block. There is a long row of prisoners waiting to empty their chamber pots. The staff try to control the queue. It must be an explosive situation.

What happens? We must recognise that what I have described is taking place in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Human faeces are thrown out of the cell windows at night. They can be found all the way round the walls of many prisons. Those are the conditions in which we are asking the staff to work, and in which prisoners have to serve their sentences. Even to begin to justify those conditions is an insult to moral standards.

We must do something. There must be drastic action. We cannot wait. If that primary action is taken, we may be able to do some of the other things that we all desire—for example, providing prison officers with the in-service training that they often want. The management and salary structure could be altered to reflect the importance of prison officers with experience, especially chief officers. They are the ones who are in contact with the prisoners, and they do the real welfare work. Unless we back them on that point, we shall fail.

I am in favour of giving the Director-General and the staff the power to speak in public. Let us get rid—in such circumstances—of the absurd use of the Official Secrets Act. Let us recognise that the prison officer's job of sympathetic control is an exercise in tightrope walking. We have undervalued prison staff. We have used prisons as dustbins; and consequently prison officers cannot cope. We have asked them to do more than is reasonable in such circumstances. It takes political courage, vision and humanity to make the necessary changes. If we cannot ask that of a Home Secretary, who can we ask it of?

I shall not follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Soley) along all the avenues down which his prejudices have led him. I agree with him, and with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner) about the appalling and disgusting conditions that are found in our prisons. Those conditions are primarily due to overcrowding in buildings that were built in another age, which had a different concept of imprisonment.

I congratulate Sir John May and his colleagues on having produced a comprehensive and valuable report. I do not share the criticism made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on his response, and on his promise of a partial remedy. He would agree—as we all do—that it is a partial remedy, but it nevertheless represents a step on the road towards remedying the disgraceful situation. I express profound opposition to, and dissent from, some of the things that have been said in the debate. I strongly oppose some of the attitudes that have been expressed by Opposition Members towards the judiciary's contribution to the solution of this problem.

The recent statements of the Lord Chief Justice—Lord Lane—have been commended. Indeed, they are commendable. He has not sought uniformity of sentence, because uniformity of sentence is unobtainable. One has to deal with individuals, and each case is different. He sought uniformity of approach. He, his colleagues in the Court of Appeal and others on the bench have recommended that the judiciary should seek to minimise the extent of prison sentences, save where the defence of society demands it. It is wrong to say that the judiciary has not complied with that. I have been exercising judicial functions—and perhaps this represents my contribution to the debate—for the past 25 years. When I first began to sit at quarter sessions there were no suspended sentences, or suspended sentences with supervision, community service orders or attendance centres. The higher courts—the quarter sessions, the assizes and the Central Criminal Court—had to send a man to prison, fine him, put him on probation, or discharge him. There was no other choice. Immense progress has been made during the past 25 years. The judiciary has cooperated in a most remarkable fashion.

Were it not for the use made of suspended sentences, the prisons would probably be three times as full. When I came back after the war to practise at the Bar, those who robbed their employers were automatically sent to prison, whether or not they were likely to do so again. Since the introduction of the suspended sentence, we have had a valuable way of marking society's reaction to the disloyalty of one who has betrayed the trust and, at the same time, it can exercise the utmost degree of mercy. Implementation of this policy has been in the hands of the judges. I would deplore and resolutely oppose any measures that this House saw fit to take in order to fetter the hands and the discretion of the judiciary in sentencing.

Since 1961 we have seen the operation of one such fetter on the power of the judiciary—that concerned with offenders under 21. The effects of this fetter have been deplorable. The judiciary has been obliged in cases involving those under 21, some of whom may have a long list of convictions behind them, to impose a sentence either of less than six months or more than three years.

The truth of the matter is that the reforms that have been made in sentencing and the new powers that have been available to the courts over the last 25 years have greatly contributed not only to a civilising of our judicial and criminal process but also to a reduction of what would otherwise have been an intolerable strain on our prisons. This is pointed out in chapter 4, paragraph 13 of the May report where it says:

"A further main cause of the loss of faith in treatment has stemmed paradoxically from the fact that the courts have been enabled and encouraged by Parliament in a series of statutes to make use of a number of new non-custodial types of sentence. The result has been that the courts are now encouraged to regard prison as the last resort, as the place where people should go only where there is no other course to take with them. Thus for many years, although the number of people coming before the courts consistently increased, the proportion sentenced to imprisonment until recently declined."

There is another point about this aspect which was touched upon by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North. He said that the fear or the certainty of detection was the principal sanction against the committal of crime. I agree. It is paradoxical that so far the failure of the police to detect has ensured that the crisis in our prisons has not reached boiling point.

In 1979 in London alone there were 68.544 burglaries in dwelling houses. The Home Secretary, in dealing with the sort of offence which demands a long sentence in order to protect society, cited terrorism and crimes of violence. I would add to that. Indeed, recently the Lord Chief Justice, in listing the sort of crimes that demanded a long sentence, included burglary in private dwellings. Long experience has shown that burglary in private dwelling houses, particularly where forcible entry has been made, is usually committed by the professional criminal. In the figure that I just quoted for London there were 51,496 cases of forcible entry.

Had all these criminals been brought to justice there would not have been enough space in our prisons to hold them. In fact, only 11 per cent. of these offenders were brought to justice. We are now encouraging the police by every means in our power to protect society and to bring more criminals to justice. That is how we shall prevent crime and maintain law and order. But if the police succeed there will be a far greater demand for prison places. Even allowing for shortening the long sentences, we shall see a number of people brought before the courts who will have to be locked up for protection of society.

By all means let us encourage judges to shorten sentences when they can be shortened—when they are for petty crime or beginners—but we must provide the prison space for the terrorist, the violent man, the rapist and the professional burglar, for the protection of society. Therefore, the answer lies in the end in building more prisons and modernising those that we have. That is the contribution that I desire to make to this debate.

I deplore the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) that there should be a sword of Damocles held over the heads of judges by this House, putting them on probation to reduce prison sentences. I regret that the right hon. and learned Member for Dulwich (Mr. Silkin), in his intervention in the speech of the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North, should have even come near to associating himself with that suggestion.

I agree, particularly with my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington (Mr. Wheeler), about the pressure that is put on prison space by those on remand. However, we shall not meet the problem by increasing the number of people on bail. I can substantiate from my experience in court what has recently been said by a number of chief constables. I see case after case where offences have been committed by people on bail. It is almost classic that the old lag, up for a number of offences, bailed until he comes to trial, commits as many more offences as he can in order to provide the better for his wife and children while he is inside later on. The answer is not to bail more people, but to shorten the period of remand, speed up our judicial process and provide more courts and judges to deal with the appalling burden of modern crime. The answer is not to let loose upon society those who are well known to be old lags and professional criminals so that they can line their families' pockets against the time that they will shortly spend in gaol.

Finally, I share entirely the comments made from both sides of the House about the necessity to keep the mentally defective and those suffering mental difficulties out of prison. The problem is that hospitals will not take them. Only last year in the Middlesex Crown court, just across Parliament Square, I had before me a man with a long series of convictions for violence, who was convicted of having an offensive weapon. I would have done anything that I could to send him to hospital. The case was adjourned to give me time to do so. No hospital would take him. They explained that they could not keep him in security, he was too dangerous and so on. Such cases are multiplied daily throughout the country. When I finally had to send him to prison, I wrote to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to say that I hoped that he would at least receive some treatment in prison. However, judges are aware that the chances of such people receiving treatment are very small indeed with the present pressures on the prison services.

I do not underrate the splendid results that have been achieved at such places as Grendon Underwood. Nevertheless, we know that the chances of such a man receiving treatment in prison are small. We must provide more facilities for the mentally unstable and defective, so that they do not crowd the cells of our already overcrowded prisons.

There is nothing soft about our prisons or penal institutions. They are harsh, tough places. I suggest that anyone who believes otherwise has not visited them.

Our prison population has been increasing over recent years. It is a sad commentary that of all West European countries we have the largest relative prison population, with the exception of West Germany. I should like to give one or two figures. In 1948, of the prison sentences given, 30 per cent. were for six months or longer. By 1975, 45 per cent. had reached this length of sentence. In contrast, in the Netherlands, where in 1948 about the same proportion of sentences were for six months or longer, by 1975 these had declined as a result of deliberate policy to 10 per cent. of all sentences. There is no evidence in the Netherlands that crime is increasing at a different rate from that in this country.

Does my hon. Friend know whether there is any evidence that the judiciary in the Netherlands resents the fact that the Netherlands legislature has imposed this policy?

I have no reason to think that the judiciary in the Netherlands resents this policy. Indeed, I differ from the hon. and learned Member for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner) and some other hon. Members in that I find it difficult to see how we can achieve the shorter sentences to which we are all paying lip service without legislation. What happens in our prisons and what are the consequences of long sentences is surely our responsibility and not that of the judiciary.

I should like to mention one other point about long sentences—the effect of public opinion. It seems to me that what is now regarded as a long sentence has changed from what public opinion thought it was some years ago. That is partly, I think, because newspapers and others have constantly kept up pressure for sentences to become longer and longer because of some of the crimes that have been committed. It seems to me that two years in prison is an intolerably long sentence, and yet by public opinion's standards, two years would be regarded as a very short sentence. I think that public opinion has been pressurising the judiciary, and that is another reason why sentences have become longer.

I turn briefly to remands in custody. At present, there are about 6,000 people untried or unsentenced in gaol. But the waiting time for trials is about 11 weeks outside London and, I understand, as long as 19 weeks in London. As has been said, in the event, about 40 per cent. of those remanded in custody are either later acquitted or given non-custodial sentences.

I urge the Home Secretary to look again at what is happening in Scotland, where those concerned have managed to do things rather better.

I note that the Home Office intends to carry out a vast new building programme. Certainly many of our old prisons are desperately in need of improvement. Wandsworth prison in my constituency needs a lot of money spent on it to improve it and make conditions more tolerable. However, I suggest that most building improvement works in our old Victorian prisons will have the effect of reducing the accommodation available. But there are other needs in Wandsworth prison. The baths and shower arrangements are hopeless, and there is a lot of pressure on prison officers when they try to give prisoners their minimum of one bath a week. More money spent on improving those facilities is very much needed.

However, I suggest that unless we pull down old prisons as we build new ones, we shall simply be making the space in which the prison population will be increased. I should like to cite some American experience. Some investigations were carried out which showed that the 15 American States that had done most prison building over the past 20 years had increased the capacity of their prisons by 56 per cent. and their prison population had then gone up by 57 per cent. But in the 15 American States which had done least prison building during the same period the prison capacity had increased by 4 per cent. and the prison population overall had fallen by 9 per cent.

I turn to secrecy in the prison system. Yesterday in the House the Home Secretary suggested that he welcomed it if police constables spoke up on behalf of their police forces. I wonder whether he would say the same for prison governors and other members of the prison service, apart from the public relations officer to be appointed. It seems to me that we are doing a disservice to our whole prison system, to all people who work in it, by surrounding our prisons with an obsessive cloak of screcy, with the result that so little of what goes on in our prisons is made known to the people outside.

I am not suggesting that every governor should take a course on becoming a public relations officer, but more openness would be welcomed by all who work in the prison system. It is an ironic comment on the secrecy that a group of hon. Members is not able to invite a prison governor to come to the House to discuss prison conditions. I ask the Home Office to look again at that position.

Some weeks ago I visited Wormwood Scrubs and saw three men in their twenties in one cell. They were spending 23 hours a day in that cell. One had been there for three months and had never been out of the cell for more than one hour a day. I can think of few more soul-destroying experiences. I do not suggest that that applies in all prisons. There is work in prisons, but, at least in some of the London prisons, we have much to answer for in keeping people in cells for 23 hours a day.

In contrast, I visited a borstal at Rochester where the work was enlightening. There was plenty of opportunity and young men were taking further qualifications. Some were enthusiastic about the fact that they would leave the borstal better qualified to earn more money and to do a better job than when they went in.

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the education service in prisons and borstals. Does he agree that that service has a crucial role in holding prisoners together while they are serving their sentences?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I agree that education and training for work are vital ingredients of prison regimes. When I went to Bullwood Hall, the closed borstal for girls, I thought that the work provided there was disappointing. The authorities were struggling to think of any work that could be provided. They would do well to take a leaf out of the Rochester borstal's book. It does not matter that there are young men at one borstal and girls at the other. It should be possible to provide better work at Bullwood Hall. When I visited the Send detention centre a few months ago, I found that young men were having to break up tape cassettes. Surely we can do better than that for young men who are kept in custody.

I understand that in institutions for women the nursing staff are properly qualified, but there is only the minimum of qualification—a three-months' training course—in institutions for men. Given the number of deaths and other incidents that occur in prison, it is desirable that we give staff in men's prisons the same sort of nursing training that we give to the staff of women's prisons.

There has been an alarming growth in the number of young offenders in our penal institutions in recent years. In 1969, a total of 2,600 young men aged between 14 and 16 were in penal institutions. By 1979, that figure had increased to more than 7,000. There has been a similar increase, though not quite as large, in the case of men and women aged between 17 and 20. The figures are alarming. There is a thin line between whether a young person, who is part of a sub-culture, becomes an offender or not.

The Home Secretary spoke recently on Westward Television about the difficulties of knowing why young persons become offenders. One of the challenges to us is to get as many young persons as possible through the difficult years of adolescence without their going into penal institutions. The evidence is that once they are put into such institutions they are caught in the system and stay in the criminal world for the rest of their lives. If we can keep them clear of that, we shall have done them a service.

I in no way condone violence or vandalism. We should not take any measures that will weaken our society or increase the threat to it. We must show full concern for the victims of crime, but it is clear that at the same time there is a need for major changes in our penal system. Those changes should take place as a matter of urgency—in fact, right away.

This has been an extremely wide-ranging debate, albeit too short. I am sorry that some hon. Members who were trying to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have not been called.

A great deal of expertise has been shown in what has been an informed debate. We have had the benefit of two excellent reports, which are complementary. One, the May report, deals primarily with the prison service, whereas the other, the Expenditure Committee report, examines how to reduce the pressure on the system.

Naturally, the emphasis has been on the figure announced by the Home Secretary, in opening the debate, of 44,324 men and women now in prison. As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Dubs) pointed out, we have a higher proportion of our population serving custodial sentences than any other European country except West Germany.

If we consider the reasons for the high prison population, we must bear in mind the important fact that last year the number of recorded offences of violence against the person increased by 9 per cent. over the 1978 figure. Another development that has added to the chronic overcrowding in prisons is that a larger number of women are being sentenced to custodial treatment. The annual report of the Prison Department states that there is an increasing number of women inmates whose crimes, circumstances and personalities are similar to those of the male prison population. Their total number in prison has now reached a record of 1,546.

It would be possible for us to have a separate debate about the causes of crime in our society, an extremely complex subject, and about ways of reducing its incidence. In this connection, I wish only to refer to one aspect of the increasing prison population, which was also referred to in passing by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Soley). The recent annual report of the parole board revealed that there was clear and unmistakable evidence that a high proportion of those who committed violent crime were drunk at the time of the offence. The board considers that in about half the cases of unpremeditated violence drink is a major factor. Much has been said today about the need to get alcoholic petty offenders out of our overcrowded prisons, but if we do not deal with the problem of violent drunken offenders their numbers in prison will continue to increase.

I should like to make it clear that, although there is a problem of alcoholics in prison, the particular worry is that alcohol is associated with crime and violence without the person concerned being an alcoholic. That is the point.

I agree.

The report of the May committee, which was established by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), has been widely welcomed. It largely endorses proposals that have been advocated for many years. Every speaker—even the Minister—has agreed that in the long term the ideal is to replace old and insanitary prisons, not to add to them with the new prisons. That should be our long-term aim.

Ideally, it should be possible for prisoners to choose between a single cell and sharing a cell. Some people believe that being in a single cell is an additional punishment and that sharing a cell is not necessarily more of a hardship. However, the existing figures of 4,833 who are three to a cell and 11,752 who are two to a cell, through no choice of their own, are surely not acceptable. That is one of the reasons why we must increase the total number of places. Overcrowding occurs not only in the cells but in relation to access to facilities. That affects prisoners and staff alike and was well illustrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth, Central (Mr. Tilley).

One school of thought supports the view that prison places are like parliamentary time—the more that are provided the more that will be filled. That implies that courts constantly look over their shoulders to see how many places there are in prisons. That is not the way in which courts should come to decisions.

The plan is for a further 3,400 prison places by 1985. I hope that those places will eventually replace present places in the old Victorian prisons. I hope that it is not planned simply to add to the total prison population.

The Home Secretary said in Bournemouth:

"We must go forward with a sustained, it necessarily modest, building programme."

During my time at the Home Office I had an almost unique experience in that I actually opened a prison. We are promised two more new establishments in 1982 and a further two in 1983. They seem drops in the ocean when we know that Liverpool prison, for example, contains about 1,500 prisoners in a building designed for 1,000. Only 13 closed prisons have been built since 1914. My hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth, Central gave a vivid description of conditions in Brixton.

I appreciate the economic constraints, but there is anxiety that new prison building and the rebuilding of parts of prisons is being emphasised more than the resources for other amenities and other ways of keeping people out of prison, such as facilities for non-custodial sentences. It is hoped that there will be a balance and that the resources provided for custodial sentences will be equivalent to those provided for non-custodial sentences. It is hoped that there will be a balance in favour of provision for the short-stay prisoner and remand prisoner who have more overcrowded conditions than long-stay prisoners.

The subject of shorter sentences has dominated the debate. Sir John May recommended that successful attempts to reduce inmate populations in Holland and Sweden suggest that United Kingdom practices, especially sentencing policy, require re-examination. Most hon. Members have supported shorter prison sentences, not across the board as the hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) implied, but only in appropriate cases and where possible as a sensible way of reducing the prison population. That is confirmed by the Expenditure Committee and successive Lord Chancellors and by most people working with offenders, including prison governors and probation officers.

Research evidence based on reconviction rates indicates that longer custodial sentences produce no better results than short sentences. The Lord Chief Justice has been referred to frequently in the debate in view of what he said recently when delivering judgment on an appeal against sentence. He said:

"When courts consider that a prison sentence is necessary they must be particularly careful to examine each case to ensure that the sentence is as short as possible, consistent with the duty to protect the public interests and punish and deter the criminals."

The reluctance of judges to impose shorter sentences—if they have been reluctant—is not, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) said, because they lack judicial will. Possibly it is partly because they believe that the public do not expect them to do so.

The natural emotional reaction of the public is often to support long sentences as a punishment for serious crime. I am sure that hon. Members would prefer to see people looking at the whole matter in a more logical and informed way. I hope that the debate, in which only one voice has been heard opposing shorter sentences, wherever possible and where appropriate, will help to persuade public opinion and, therefore, the courts to support the enlightened view of Lord Lane.

We should also encourage greater public knowledge about, and acceptance of, alternatives to prison. These may then be found more acceptable to the courts. As well as being cheaper, they are often equally as effective as, if not more effective than, prison. We must keep questioning the benefit of the custodial sentence. A sample of people given custodial sentences for serious criminal offences in January 1971 was studied by the Home Office. It was found that by the end of 1976 about 70 per cent. of those people had been reconvicted. This makes an extremely depressing statistic, but in Holland, shorter prison sentences and more non-custodial sentences are accompanied by crime statistics that are no greater proportionately than our own.

It is clear that we must increase the use of non-custodial sentences wherever possible. While the courts, we hope, are lending their minds to shorter sentences where appropriate, it is also to be hoped that they will heed the call for a greater use of probation to relieve the prison system. Most of those on probation avoid further serious crime for the average period of two years during which they are under supervision. The probation service itself would welcome this development as it would mean that it was working with offenders at an earlier and more successful stage instead of during, and after, a custodial sentence.

I join the tributes to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) for chairing the successful report of the Expenditure Committee. I particularly support the recommendation that the Department of Health and Social Security should accept more responsibility for accommodating mentally disordered offenders. The previous Government found, as the present Government also find, that some NHS staff and the public are reluctant to give higher priority to the needs of mentally disordered offenders, especially when there is great pressure on Health Service resources. I hope that the views expressed in the debate will help to promote a better understanding of the problem and greater co-operation in dealing with it by all concerned. I also hope that the DHSS will not regard the research project, set up with the Home Office on this matter, as a reason for delay in taking action to overcome the problem.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South raised the question of remand. I should like the Minister to say whether the Government have any proposals for dealing with this serious situation in which nearly one in seven of all prisoners are now awaiting trial. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman comment on the suggestion of the National Association of Probation Officers relating to the introduction of a time limit on remand—a statutory maximum period of 110 days—similar to Scottish criminal practice?

There have been many tributes paid during the debate to the role of prison officers. I am sure that this is the general feeling of all hon. Members who have spoken. Most of us have attended meetings with prison officers. They feel strongly that they want to play an active and constructive role within the prison system and not act merely as turnkeys. They want to be more concerned with the welfare and rehabilitation of prisoners. The Opposition would support any measures that reduce burdens on the prison staff, including measures to increase recruitment.

Amid the general welcome for the May report and the proposals of the Expenditure Committee, it is often said that all that is needed now is the political will to act upon them. But it seems that it will need far more than simply the will of this House—a will that is clearly in evidence. It will need the positive and enthusiastic support and co-operation of everyone working in this sphere, especially the prison and probation officers and the courts. Above all, it will need the support of the general public, because it represents the taxpayers who will be footing the bill. Their support is needed for the measures that do not require resources. As the Home Secretary said, this is only the beginning and there is a great deal more to be done.

In the subject that we have been debating, it has been customary for policy decisions to be taken, not on the basis of a simple decision by the Government of the day but by a process of building up an informed consensus. That is because the number of agencies involved in implementing the policy are so diverse, and many of them, such as the judiciary, rightly so independent, that this is the proper approach. However, for that to work, it is absolutely essential that there should be reports—such as those of the Expenditure Committee, the all-party penal affairs group and the May committee—to form a basis for the development of such a consensus. We are indeed fortunate to have had those reports and now to have had the benefit of the comments of the House on them. I hasten to add that that is not the last word, because opportunities will and do recur for us to consider these matters.

The debate can be divided into two parts—first, that concerned with conditions in prisons as they are, dealing with the people who are there at present, and, secondly, with the question of who should be in prison and what one can do in order to deal with the numbers in prison.

On prison building, my right hon. Friend explained the position. A specific question was asked by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. Morris) about Appleton Thorn. We are planning for the new young offender establishment there to become operational by the mid-1980s.

Turning to wider matters, reference was made from time to time—in particular by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) and more recently by the hon. Member for Halifax (Dr. Summerskill)—to the aspirations of prison officers and to their desire to play a larger and more constructive part than that of merely fulfilling the role of turnkey. As the hon. Lady felicitously put it, they seek an active and constructive role. That is an aspiration that we share on their behalf.

In order to give reality to it, the key is very much the question of training. We recognise the desire for a more fulfilling role, and we are anxious to improve the efficiency with which we use our valuable staff resources. We shall, therefore, shortly be undertaking a comprehensive review of training provided in the prison service in accordance with the recommendations of the May committee. I very much hope that that will lead to opportunities for prison staff to give reality to their genuine desire to play a more constructive role.

Reference was also made to another series of matters relating to the conditions of prison officers. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Crouch) and others raised questions relating to rent allowances and matters of that kind. I am sure that hon. Members will appreciate that it is impossible to answer all those points now, but we shall want to consider them carefully.

Most of this debate has been concerned with the questions of the size of the prison population and with what can and should be done to reduce it. Reference was made to the growth of non-custodial sentences. The hon. Member for Halifax asked us to support the use of noncustodial sentences and the greater use of probation. I am happy to accede instantly to that plea. The probation service has the ability, resources and desire to play an even greater role than it has done in the past, and we shall support it in its efforts to do so. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) gave a graphic account of the development of non-custodial sentences over the past few years. It is right that we should concentrate on the difficulties that we have experienced, but, difficult as the situation is today, it would have been infinitely worse if successive Governments had not developed the alternatives to which my hon. and learned Friend referred.

What can we do today to ensure that those who should not be in prison are no longer there? Reference has been made to court delays, which concern the Government as a whole. I say "the Government as a whole" because responsibility goes beyond the Home Office. One of the steps that can and should be taken is the provision of courts and judicial manpower to deal with cases. The Lord Chancellor has taken steps to provide a substantial number of extra courts. But the more fundamental steps that can be taken will depend on alterations in the prosecution process. That matter is being considered fundamentally and radically by the Royal Commission, which will report by the end of the year. I do not think that we can reasonably be expected to take steps in that direction without the benefit of the report.

Specific reference was made to the question of the 110-day limit on custodial remands. That course is not nearly as promising as has been suggested in the debate. The Scottish rule is not absolute. It is aimed primarily at delay by the prosecutor. The High Court may extend the 110-day period if the court is satisfied that the delay is due to a sufficient cause for which the prosecutor is not responsible. Our provision south of the border is covered by section 7 (4) of the Courts Act 1971 which provides that

"The trial of a person … shall, unless the Crown Court has otherwise ordered, begin not later than the expiration of the period … prescribed by Crown Court rules,"

which is eight weeks from the date of committal. That is similar in form to the Scottish provision, except that the period in the one case is prescribed by rule and not in the statute. The difference is not great. But, in any event, if an artificial rule of that sort were rigidly enforced it would be like the question of price controls—to take an analogy from a different area. We are trying to stem the flood, but it does not stop the problem, because there will soon be grave public disquiet if the prosecution process cannot be speeded up and large numbers of people, many of whom might be dangerous, have to be released.

It is fair to say that the debate concentrated on the question of removing from the prison system the categories of prisoners referred to very graphically by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Irving), and also on the question of short sentences more generally. Obviously this whole area of diversion from custody is one with which we are very concerned.

One of the categories mentioned was that of the petty persistent offender. The Home Office research unit has for some time been engaged in a series of research projects designed to examine ways in which petty persistent offenders might be diverted from prison. We hope to publish in the new year the results of the work.

The research has examined three points in the criminal justice process—arrest, sentence and release from prison—where attempts could be made to reduce the interaction of petty persistent offenders within the criminal justice system.

We hope to develop further work in connection with the initiative to provide a simpler form of overnight shelter for drunks and also in relation to the use of day centres.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham was right in saying that many of these categories of people—the fine defaulters, and those begging and sleeping rough—are people whose presence in the criminal system is inappropriate. I disagree with him only in his remarks that they could be removed inexpensively and quickly. The obstacles to their removal—which is dependent on the provision of alternative facilities in the community—are not insubstantial. If it was as easy as that to solve the problem, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that Conservative and Labour Governments who have had to deal with it would have seized the opportunity with open hands.

I turn next to the question of shorter sentences generally. Suggestions have been made by the right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) and others that some sort of action should be taken on a legislative basis. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has not excluded the possibility of action being taken, but he pointed to the disadvantages of such a course. They are considerable.

The right hon. Member for Leeds, South reminisced about discussion of the matter which showed that when remission had gone up to one-third there had been a compensatory effect from the courts. That is something that cannot be avoided unless we adopt the other approach of altering the maximum sentences, as opposed to dealing with matters such as remission and conditional release.

I do not believe that there is much future in attempting to reduce the maximum sentences. The reason is not just the question of public reaction to any attempt to do that. The reaction would be quite considerable, as was shown when the advisory council published its report. The reason is more fundamental than that. The existence in prison of people with sentences that are rather longer than they might necessarily have does not derive primarily from the use of the maximum of the range. It is not the case that people are being sentenced to life imprisonment, to 14 years, or whatever the maximum may be. That is not what causes the problem. Where the problem arises is a truly exceptional case, and the law must be flexible enough to deal with it. I am more optimistic than some hon. Members—but as optimistic as my hon. and learned Friends the Members for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner) and Solihull—in saying that there are signs that the message has got through and that the courts are responding.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Soley) said that this proposal had been around for years. It has, but there is such a thing as an idea that comes of age and that is seen to be right. In my experience—which is not as extensive as that of many hon. Members on both sides of the House—I detect a different attitude and a development in the approach to the problem in recent months and years which gives us cause for optimism. Of course, it is too early to say, but I believe that the speeches in this debate today—

There is much public concern about the behaviour of the agents of the media in relation to criminals. Journalists have interviewed escaped prisoners; Idi Amin has been televised. Such incidents arouse moral outrage on the part of the public.

Why should the media appear to be a law unto themselves? That question is particularly acute in relation to terrorism. This morning my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General defined terrorism in a way which can be summarised as "acts of violence for political ends". Terrorism thrives on publicity. Publicity is an essential element in the aims of the terrorist. It is morally wrong to consort with criminals. In relation to terrorists, is also criminal.

Section 11 of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1976 provides that anyone in contact with terrorists has a legal duty to inform the police.

Last year two incidents occurred in which the BBC, acting through its staff, in my opinion, broke the law. The first was a televised interview with a member of an Irish terrorist organisation who, according to the transcript of the broadcast, said

"We have murdered Airey Neave",

and explained how and why that foul deed was done.

The second incident was the filming at Carrickmore in Northern Ireland of a road block set up by the Provisional IRA.

It is common ground that the police were not informed in both cases.

The conduct of the BBC staff involved in this matter was disgraceful and, I believe, criminal. What the BBC and its apologists fail to remember is that in Northern Ireland we are fighting a vicious war in which British lives are being lost almost every day. It is a war with battles just as bitter and cruel as any during the Second World War. What would have happened during that war if the BBC, or a member of its staff, had interviewed Dr. Goebbels and asked him to explain why the Nazis thought it necessary to kill British troops or to exterminate Jews? The people responsible for such an interview would have been strung up on the nearest lamp posts. Yet there is no difference in principle from what the BBC has done in these cases.

Why has the BBC not been prosecuted? I asked my right hon. and learned Friend that question recently in a written question and on 4 July he replied that, acting within his authority, he had decided not to prosecute but that he had written to the chairman of the governors of the BBC a letter which, on 18 July, in reply to a further question from me, he refused to publish.

The matter cannot be left there. I do not believe that the difficulty in this case is insufficiency of evidence. My right hon. and learned Friend has not sought to suggest that it is. The only ground must be public policy within the guidelines laid down by a former Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, as he then was, in this place on 29 January 1951, as reported in Hansard for that day, at column 681.

What public policy could justify letting the BBC off scot-free when a serious crime has been committed? If it has been let off with a caution, why are we not entitled to know? Judging from unofficial leaks that I have heard from the BBC, it seems that it has rejected any criticism of its conduct and that of its employees. Its apologists talk piously of political interference and censorship. The law must be obeyed however mighty the culprit, and that applies just as much to Granada Television as to the BBC.

It is Parliament that makes the law. We were elected to make it. It is for us to set the limits. No one elected the governors of the BBC or authorised them to define the law.

The incidents of which I speak may not be the most serious, but they are not the only ones that cause one to have worries about the way in which the BBC and members of its staff are exercising their duties. Some curious items have been broadcast, notably on the World Service, by the BBC—for example, the broadcasting of IRA songs, which leads one to suspect that some BBC staff are in active sympathy with the IRA.

Has my right hon. and learned Friend let off the BBC? If so, why? If so. what guarantee do we have that this and similar offences will not be repeated?

I welcome this opportunity to make a brief contribution in this important debate. I believe that there are various issues which should be ventilated publicly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) described the programmes which gave rise to our grave concern. I wish to confine my comments to the "Tonight" programme broadcast on 5 July 1979, which broadcast an interview with the alleged murderers of my predecessor, Airey Neave, and an employee of the BBC, Mr. David Lomax.

Soon after this broadcast I contacted the then Director-General of the BBC and expressed my objections to this interview. Sir Ian Trethowan, in a written response to my objections, stated

"that we should remind the public of the thinking and nature and character of those people who are committed to acts of terrorism and violence."

He continued:

"it is not enough to report the daily acts of violence in the Province. I see it as part of our duty to look at its causes and its practitioners."

I believe that in this instance the BBC made a serious error of judgment. The programme deeply distressed the late Mr. Neave's family, his friends, colleagues and constituents, and was regarded by many as a national outrage. His murder was fresh in their minds. In addition, various allegations, albeit groundless in truth and fact, were made about him which were nevertheless harmful and tasteless.

So the first charge that I press against the makers of this programme is that of appalling taste and the timing of the broadcast, which was offensive to all who heard it. I accept, however, that matters of taste are matters of opinion and a value judgment in the eye of the beholder. The counter-argument would be that the sensibilities of those I have already mentioned should be subordinated to the wider national interest as expressed in Sir Ian Trethowan's letter.

However, the BBC enjoys an unparalleled reputation as a medium concerned with the highest standards of truth, blended with balanced comment. Such a reputation carries onerous responsibilities towards the public. The public regard, and rightly so, serious programmes produced by the BBC as having weight and credibility.

In the instance of this programme, the BBC gave its cloak of status and credibility to a murderous illegal organisation which otherwise would have skulked in the shadows of obscurity to which it naturally belongs before it is brought to justice. In giving this evil organisation an opportunity to parade its corruptive argument justifying its murder in the guise of a political exposition to a massive audience, the BBC gave it assistance in terms of publicity. To these illegal gangs, wedded to murder in pursuit of their goals, publicity acts as nourishment for its crazed members and supporters, and as a seed-bed for recruits. Such publicity acts as a spur in terms of raising morale; and that can lead to further violence.

It is possible that the programme organisers breached the law in terms of the way in which they conducted the interview. I understand that they did not inform the authorities until after the event. In short, they placed their desire for a scoop before the overriding national interest which must be, unarguably, to bring those responsible for the appalling murder of Airey Neave to justice.

However, I recognise the dilemma in which the prosecuting authorities find themselves in retrospect, as to what action—if any—they should take. I am not party to all the facts surrounding this incident, nor am I a lawyer. As a layman, it would seem to me that it might be difficult to prove criminal intent on the part of those BBC authorities responsible for the programme. If a breach of the law has been committed, it could be argued that those responsible were unaware that they were acting in contravention of the law and were genuinely sustained by the belief that they were acting in the public interest. It is relatively easy to launch a prosecution but much harder to achieve a conviction in the courts in such circumstances.

Doubtless, consideration must be given as to the possible byproduct of such a prosecution. The stars of the programme, the murderers, might secure substantial quantities of gratuitous publicity for their seedy cause. Let us not forget that it was for publicity that the organisation sought the interview in the first place. Also, there is the risk that in the event of an unsuccessful prosecution the finding of "not guilty" would be translated into a victory for the murderers. The real issues might become obscured.

I see only one reason why the Attorney-General might wish to prosecute such an august body as the BBC in such circumstances—namely, if lessons had not been learnt and if there were a possibility of an encore. In that case, the Attorney-General might feel obliged to demonstrate that no one—be he never so powerful—is above the law.

I hope that lessons will have been learnt and that those responsible for the programme will not congratulate themselves. I hope that they will think most carefully before making another similar programme.

I rise briefly to support my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), and to congratulate him on bringing this issue before the House. Concern is widespread, and growing. There is evidence of that support in the number of Conservative Members who are here to support my hon. Friend. It is not just that the programme represented an extremely repulsive error of taste among those at the highest levels of the BBC, but in addition, we are concerned that terrorism and bestial murder are being dignified beneath the cloak of some bogus media ethic.

I understand that such a programme would never be permitted in the Republic of Ireland. Not only are programmes not permitted about organisations that are proscribed in the Republic of Ireland, but in addition no programmes are permitted about organisations that are proscribed in Northern Ireland. If the Act is not man enough to cope with such a situation, and if there is no room for the only logical result—namely, a prosecution—it should be made man enough. There is no shortage of Conservative Members who are prepared to support an amendment of the Act. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will reassure us.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that legislation is not a matter for an Adjournment debate.

I should like to speak on behalf of my late colleague and friend, Mr. Airey Neave, and to express my repugnance of the type of programme which was produced on 5 July, and to which my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Benyon) has referred.

The immediate power and influence of television is unsurpassed. Therefore, that power should not be abused. It should be used responsibly.

I do not want it to be said of the BBC what Mr. Baldwin said about the press in his day—that it enjoyed the power of the harlot; power without responsibility.

I received many letters from my constituents immediately after the programme, expressing their personal dislike of, and dismay about this programme. If that is the kind of programme that emanates from the media, the reputation that Mr. Baldwin attributed to the press when he was Prime Minister will be emulated by the reputation of the people who put out programmes of this type.

rose—

Does the hon. Member have the permission of the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) to speak in the debate?

The hon. Member has my permission.

I wish to place on the record once again that Ulster people were absolutely horrified by the interview to which my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) has referred. They were aghast that a national organisation such as the BBC could not only put over a programme which attacked Mr. Airey Neave, who served this country so well, but should try to undermine the security forces in Northern Ireland who are trying to keep law and order.

Like every other urban guerrilla force, the IRA thrives on publicity and welcomes an opportunity to put forward its view. The programme should be condemned and action should be taken in such circumstances.

I wish briefly to express a view which is not in any way designed to make political capital out of a great tragedy for the House of Commons. But I should be failing in my duty if I did not join with my Ulster colleague, the hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder), in saying that we condemn utterly the activities of those who were not merely alleged to have committed the crime, but who confessed to it. As on previous occasions, we express the hope—so far in vain—that a more responsible attitude will be shown by the BBC and the other organs of the media. I hope that due notice will be taken of the unanimous view expressed in the debate today.

I am grateful for the manner in which my hon. Friends have contributed to this debate. The facts are important, so I shall summarise them briefly.

On 30 March 1979 Mr. Airey Neave was murdered in circumstances that are well known. Within a short time of the explosion that caused his death an organisation calling itself the Irish National Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the explosion. By reason of the detail provided, it was thought that the claim was true. Between March and July 1979 a BBC production team for the "Tonight" programme was attempting to contact a terrorist spokesman in Ireland, and these efforts culminated in complex arrangements for the team to meet a representative of INLA in Dublin on 3 July.

On 5 July during the "Tonight" programme the BBC television services broadcast an interview between a member of its staff and a man purporting to be a spokesman for INLA. There was widespread public revulsion as a result of this broadcast, which I shared. It was not the interview itself which might constitute an offence under section 11 of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, but information received in the course of making the arrangements for it and the identity of the spokesman.

The other incident was at Carrickmore. Another BBC production team preparing an item for broadcast as part of the "Panorama" programme was in Dublin. Shortly before the team was due to leave for Belfast an anonymous telephone call was received inviting the team to go to Carrickmore in Northern Ireland where there would be something for it to film. The team went and witnessed a road block set up by suspected members of the Provisional IRA who were armed. A number of passing motorists were stopped and questioned. The team filmed and sound recorded what was happening, and members of the team could have been under no misapprehension about what was happening. Although they were aware that what they had witnessed was a criminal offence, no member of the team took steps to inform the police or the Army. They contacted the Army the following day, seeking its assistance with further filming. By that time the Army had got wind of what had happened and raised it with the team. Only then did any member of the team report any details of what had been witnessed.

Having briefly outlined the facts of each incident, I should first like to say that I profoundly disapprove of the conduct of the BBC staff directly involved, which was, in my view, deplorable. However, I could not base a decision to institute proceedings on disapproval only, however deeply felt. I had to have regard to the general circumstances of the alleged offences, the prospects of obtaining convictions and what in the long term would be in the best interests of the public.

I was satisfied that the actions of the BBC staff were of a kind that would have constituted offences under section 11 of the 1976 Act. It is worth reminding the House and perhaps the public of what that section provides:

"If a person who has information which he knows or believes might be of material assistance—

(a) in preventing an act of terrorism … or

(b) in securing the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of any person for an offence involving the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism …

fails without reasonable excuse to disclose that information as soon as practicable … to a constable or … in Northern Ireland … a member of Her Majesty's forces, he shall be guilty of an offence."

A number of factors in the end made me decide against proceedings in both cases, each of which I considered individually but at the same time, and with the benefit of leading counsel's advice and the views of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

While it is not usual practice to disclose the evidence that I have before me in reaching a decision, I can point to one or two parts of it that had some influence on me. In the INLA incident—and because it involved an interview with someone who boasted of being associated with the muderers of Airey Neave it was therefore the more deplorable one—the events took place in the Dublin area, and any information that could have been passed to the United Kingdom authorities would have been of limited value. Moreover, such as would have been available was of limited value.

That could not be said of the Carrickmore incident, because there the BBC staff were witnesses to an act of terrorism. It would have been foolhardy of them to report the incident while in the immediate area, but their failure to do so later was wrong. They sought, belatedly, the advice of a BBC legal adviser, and acting on the advice given decided still not to report the matter. That advice was, in my view, unquestionably wrong. Moreover, I doubt that bad legal advice could be regarded as a reasonable excuse for failing to inform the proper authorities. Nevertheless, I took into consideration the fact that advice had been sought and given.

It must be obvious to everyone that the BBC staff were being used by INLA and the Provisional IRA for propaganda purposes. While that makes their conduct more regrettable, one factor that I had to bear in mind—and this was pointed to in the excellent contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Benyon)—was whether by instituting proceedings, particularly if unsuccessful, I may be adding to such propaganda. I do not say that that was a major factor in reaching my decision, but it was one that I bore in mind.

Another factor that influenced me was that, by the time the papers reached me for a decision, the BBC had already taken steps to tighten control over reporting of terrorist activities in Northern Ireland. I am glad that the corporation took that step of its own accord. It reminded me of the success of my choosing to refer to the Press Council the conduct of some newspapers over the question of payment of witnesses in a recent case.

There were grounds to believe that the action that the BBC had already taken would prevent a recurrence of the conduct in question. That this would be the consequence of any action that should be taken was, to my mind, of great importance. I would add that, although neither incident could, in my view, be regarded as remotely falling into the category of proper reporting, the BBC and the press have a duty, which, apart from being dangerous, must be very difficult to perform fairly, to inform the public about Northern Ireland affairs.

Those are some of the reasons for my decision.

I was, however, determined that my decision should not be interpreted as a licence to journalists to have relation- ships with terrorists outside the legal restrictions which operated on all others. There is no such licence, and that must be clearly understood. Therefore, after I had decided not to prosecute, I saw the chairman of the BBC governors, Sir Michael Swann, to convey to him personally my views on the matter and the strength of my feelings. I also wanted to make certain that he understood that my decision did not imply that I took the view that conduct of the kind which had taken place could not constitute an offence. I followed this with a letter reaffirming the views that I had expressed at our meeting, making it quite clear that if similar incidents took place again I would take a stricter view of what had happened and those who participated would be on warning that, subject to the evidence and circumstances of the case, they risk criminal proceedings under the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act. I trust that there will be no repetition, and I welcome the fact that the BBC has taken clear steps to prevent one. But the warning remains.

So, for the benefit of others who have not seen the correspondence, perhaps I may broadly summarise what I believe the law to be. Anyone who has contact with terrorists puts himself potentially in the position of acquiring information which would place him under a legal duty to report it as soon as possible to the proper authorities. Those involved in such contacts must consider carefully the consequences of their acts and the risk they run if they do not report quickly relevant information which has come into their possession.