Without a proper probation service, I believe, the present Crisis of Overcrowding in our prisons, to which the right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South referred, could well turn into a catastrophe.
I can do no better than quote the Home Secretary, who said in February this year:Of the many problems facing me as Home Secretary, the most pressing and dangerous is the chronic Crisis of Overcrowding in our prisons which threatens to undermine our criminal justice system and its contribution to maintaining law and order in our society".
In a speech to the Leicestershire magistrates on 13 February the right hon. Gentleman said:Of the many problems facing me as Home Secretary, the most pressing and dangerous is the chronic Crisis of Overcrowding in our prisons which threatens to undermine our criminal justice system and its contribution to maintaining law and order in our society.
We must view that against the background of the current Crisis of Overcrowding in the prison system, which was referred to by the Home Secretary in a speech to the Leicestershire magistrates on 13 February which will be repeated and quoted time and again.
Since the first day that the Home Secretary took office he has done more than any Home Secretary in recent years to draw public attention to the Crisis of Overcrowding in our prisons.
Now we have a Bill that contains nothing to suggest that the Government are even basically aware that there is a Crisis of Overcrowding in our prisons, that we still require many prison staff to work in conditions that would be outlawed if the prisons were not immune from the health and safety at work legislation, that we submit many prisoners to conditions that can only make them more anti-social and criminally inclined, and that we are disrupting the lives of the families of prisoners, because we should never forget the effect on the families of people committed to prison.
I am thinking particularly of the Crisis of Overcrowding in our prisons.
We state: "The Prison Service is again facing a Crisis of Overcrowding, on a scale which it has not seen for 15 years.
There should also be a provision allowing us scope to address the Crisis of Overcrowding, as we need an opportunity to deal with the problem.
The Overcrowding Crisis is now so great that the Government perpetually seem to be running behind the problems.
The Overcrowding Crisis is such that I regularly see in my constituency office surgeries families of six or more who are living in two-bedroom flats.
If we already have an Overcrowding Crisis on our railways, where are those passengers going to travel?
Will the Secretary of State give a commitment today that all the extra money raised from passengers in that way will be spent on tackling the Overcrowding Crisis on our railways?
The Minister says that the Government have built 20,000 new places, but several of these new prisons were contracted for prior to 1997, and does he really believe that the 20,000 new places will be sufficient to deal with the Crisis of Overcrowding?
The Overcrowding Crisis is a fundamental problem and a consequence of the wider malaise in the criminal justice system.
The Minister mentioned the announcements about improving treatment for drug and alcohol problems, which I obviously welcome, but if they had been made a little earlier we might not have the Overcrowding Crisis.
The Minister mentioned the announcements about improving treatment for drug and alcohol problems, which I obviously welcome, but if they had been made a little earlier we might not have the Current Overcrowding Crisis.
And the Current Overcrowding Crisis serves only to exacerbate these problems.
Why did all London local authorities receive the same allocation of £100,000 when - to put it gently to colleagues from all parties - Bromley, as far as I am aware, does not have an Overcrowding Crisis, but Newham, Hackney, Westminster and Islington do?
Not only do we have the Department's projections; I have personally received a letter complaining that the Justice Secretary has been warned by his own officials that the prison population will continue to rise without adequate capacity, and that that will create a Crisis of Overcrowding within two years.
All that money could have been spent on building the houses we need to deal with the Overcrowding Crisis and other crises of which the Government speak; instead, house building is at its lowest level since the 1920s.
They have presided over the dismantling of civil legal aid and now of criminal legal aid, the privatisation of the probation service, chaos in those courtrooms that are still open, an Overcrowding Crisis in our prisons, the expansion of secret courts, attacks on human rights, and restrictions on access to justice for victims and those of limited means.
In light of the Current Overcrowding Crisis in the prison system, The Guardian reported today that the Lord Chancellor will be unable to implement his legislation, if passed, for at least a year; his reverse King Midas touch extends, it seems, to all areas of the criminal justice system.
We need to address not just that revolving door, but overcrowding, because the reality is that, as people return to the penal system, we are building on the Overcrowding Crisis.
You cannot build your way out of an Overcrowding Crisis.