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Tag: David Ramsbotham

  • OBITUARY : David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham (1934-2022)

    OBITUARY : David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham (1934-2022)

    OBITUARY : David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham (1934-2022)

    David Ramsbotham was born on 6 November 1934, the son of John Ramsbotham who later went on to become the Bishop of Wakefield. He served in the army between 1953 and 1993, later serving as the Adjutant-General to the Forces between 1990 and 1993. He was appointed as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons in 1995, serving in that role until 2001. The Guardian newspaper noted in 2001 that he had clashed numerous times with the Home Office:

    “Ramsbotham’s direct, military approach ruffled the mandarins. They confined him to talking to junior ministers, which, in the case of the then prisons minister Paul Boateng, could be regarded as a different form of penal servitude.”

    In  2005, Ramsbotham was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Ramsbotham of Kensington and he sat as a crossbencher. He continued an involvement with the Prison Reform Trust who issued a tribute to him saying:

    “He was literally and metaphorically a towering figure in our world — instantly recognisable for his bearing and the meticulous care with which he framed his devastating critique of all that needed changing in our prison system.”

    Ramsbotham died following a fall on 13 December 2022, at the age of 88.

    Speeches by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham

    Prisongate: The Shocking State of Britain’s Prisons and the Need for Visionary Change (Amazon Link) by David Ramsbotham and published in 2003.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2020 Speech on the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2020 Speech on the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The speech made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 11 November 2020.

    My Lords, I must declare two interests in explaining why I have put my name to the amendment—first, as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties, and secondly, as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. As always, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, both of whom know a great deal more about this subject than I do.

    As I reported on Second Reading, on 12 August the Minister in the other place wrote that the Bill would allow the Government to update those professional organisations that can prescribe medicines when it was safe and appropriate to do so. This is in line with what the Minister said on Second Reading, which was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. If the experience of dieticians, orthoptists, diagnostic radiographers and speech and language therapists is anything to go by, the role of such people has expanded considerably during the pandemic, during which there has been ever-increasing pressure on health professionals.

    Prescribing responsibilities would enable allied professions to share the burden with their NHS colleagues and avoid unnecessary delay and duplication for patients. Their call for increased prescribing responsibilities is backed up by hard-pressed NHS trusts, which have identified a means of increasing their capacity. Therefore I hope that, on the basis of experience during the pandemic, the Minister will be able to announce proposals and a timetable for extending prescribing rights for certain carefully chosen health professional organisations within three months of the Bill being passed, as part of the NHS long-term improvement plan.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2021 Speech on the Substance Testing in Prisons Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2021 Speech on the Substance Testing in Prisons Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The speech made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 16 April 2021.

    My Lords, I strongly support the intention behind the Bill and am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, began her excellent introduction with a tribute to the late Dame Cheryl Gillan, whose Bill it is, but I admit to being worried about the practicalities of delivery.

    I have always thought that the Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service set too much store by the effectiveness of mandatory drug testing, which, far from being the important tool that they claim, proves nothing except how many people test negative and has always been capable of manipulation.

    To illustrate how easy manipulation is, when I was chief inspector, I once went into a cell and noticed some certificates on the wall. On asking the prisoner what they were for, I was told that they were for testing drug-free, which it was known he was, and that if I came back the next month, there would be another one. Another time, I went into a prison where there were alleged to be no drug users, which I simply did not believe. I found that the prison made a practice of testing only vulnerable prisoners, who were notoriously drug-free. I ordered an immediate test of the whole prison, which found that 47% were users.

    The effects of apparently freely available psychoactive and other substances have been well documented, including increased violence against staff and other prisoners. The absence of, or the inability of many prisoners to access, treatment programmes is also a worry. I would be happier if, in addition to trying to prevent substances getting into a prison, there was evidence of a desire to achieve better testing and more access to treatment.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2021 Comments on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2021 Comments on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The comments made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 26 April 2021.

    Lord Ramsbotham (CB) [V]

    My Lords, I declare two interests. First, I once had the honour and pleasure of serving with the King’s African Rifles and, secondly, as Adjutant-General I was an ex officio member of the council of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. When I was Chief Inspector of Prisons, I once noted in the chapel of a prison on the Isle of Wight a memorial to four people killed in the Great War. They were identified only by their prison numbers. In accordance with the motto of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission—

    “I will make you a name”—

    I set about discovering their names, which I succeeded in doing. Will the Minister please assure me that these forgotten casualties will soon, like them, be made names?

    Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)

    Indeed, and so they should be. I am sure that this is an important part of the ongoing work. One thing is very clear and it is the first recommendation of the report—which we have accepted, as we have accepted them all—that there is ongoing commitment to search for those who fell and to recognise the dead and find the names of those who died.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2021 Comments on the Treatment of Iraqi Interpreters (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2021 Comments on the Treatment of Iraqi Interpreters (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The comments made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 14 October 2021.

    Lord Ramsbotham (CB)

    My Lords, does the Minister agree that we have forfeited any right to have our word taken as our bond, through our shameful treatment of those whom we employed as interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan?

    Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)

    My Lords, I would not use the word “shameful”. In total, from Iraq, we relocated, with their families, 1,328 people. Of course, 7,000 Afghan nationals have now been resettled in the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, otherwise known as ARAP.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2021 Speech on the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2021 Speech on the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The speech made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 15 November 2021.

    My Lords, I strongly support all the amendments in this group, not least because the cause of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences has been languishing ever since such sentences were formally abolished by LASPO in 2012.

    I commend the tireless work of my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood on their behalf. For nearly 27 years, since my first inspection as Chief Inspector of Prisons, I have been campaigning for changes to be made to the operational management structure of the Prison Service to bring it in line with the practice in every business, hospital or school: to appoint named people responsible and accountable for particular functions within the organisation concerned.

    In the case of prisons, I have campaigned for separate directors to be appointed for every type of prison, and for certain types of prisoners—lifers, sex offenders, women, young offenders, the elderly, foreign nationals, and those serving indeterminate sentences. Imagine how easy it would be for Ministers interested in IPP, for example, to send for the relevant director and question him or her about what was happening or not happening to all prisoners in that category. I had hoped that somewhere in the 298 pages of this monstrous Bill, space might have been found for something so practical. However, as that is clearly not going to happen, I stringently commend the change to the Minister.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2022 Comments on the Nationality and Borders Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2022 Comments on the Nationality and Borders Bill (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The comments made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 5 January 2022.

    My Lords, when you are speaking 51st on the Second Reading of a Bill which has already generated much controversy in the other place, the chances are that some other noble Lords will have already mentioned any point you wished to make. That is very true in this case, so I will make only one point, which I beg the Minister to take away and reflect on, because it is borne out by practical experience. I break off to thank James Tobin for a most comprehensive Library briefing.

    In 2010, I was asked to chair an inquiry into the death of an Angolan under restraint on an aircraft at Heathrow, on which he was being returned to Angola, guarded by G4S. We were shocked by the poor standard of the Home Office decision-makers and caseworkers involved in returns, to the extent that my committee commented on them in its final report. Worse even than this, there appeared to be no supervision of their work. The arrangements made for families appeared to be better than those for single people, a point which I advise the Minister to respect before embarking on this extremely controversial Bill, about which many noble Lords have expressed their unease.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2022 Parliamentary Question on the Royal Commission on the Criminal Justice System (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2022 Parliamentary Question on the Royal Commission on the Criminal Justice System (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The parliamentary question asked by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 7 February 2022.

    Lord Ramsbotham

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made with the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Criminal Justice System announced in the 2019 Queen’s Speech.

    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)

    My Lords, as I said in answer to the noble Lord’s Question on 6 July last year, due to the pandemic, we slowed work to establish the royal commission. Significant new programmes of work were established to support recovery and build back a better system. In the last six months, we have undertaken several new programmes, and our focus is on delivering these priorities over the coming months.

    Lord Ramsbotham (CB)

    My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I make no apologies for asking the Question again, because, as I have said before, I regarded it as extremely discourteous of the Government to ask Her Majesty the Queen to make an announcement which they had no intention of implementing. I had no notice of the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to bring up this matter on Report on the police Bill. I invite the Minister to say what he said in reply to that intervention.

    Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)

    My Lords, since the Queen’s Speech in 2019, there has been the small matter of a global pandemic, which has affected the criminal justice system very substantially. We reacted to that: we put in place particular new ways of working. We have taken a lot of that work forward: there is the Second Reading this afternoon of the Judicial Review and Courts Bill, which contains more reforms to the criminal justice system. I therefore think, with respect, that it is a little unfair to say—in fact, it is inaccurate—that we have no intention of implementing that. As to what I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in Committee, I stand by that, absolutely.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2022 Speech on the Chagos Islands (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2022 Speech on the Chagos Islands (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The speech made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Rambotham, in the House of Lords on 28 February 2022.

    My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 1, to which I have added my name. I declare an interest as a vice-chairman of the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory) All-Party Parliamentary Group. How do the Government have the neck to condemn others for far less, while at the same time standing condemned by both the International Criminal Court and the General Committee of the United Nations for refusing to allow the Chagos Islanders and their descendants citizen rights to return to their homeland, despite promises that they would be allowed to do so after 30 years? I remember, as long ago as 2013, reading out a letter from a Pentagon Minister to the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister saying that the Pentagon had no objection to the return of the islanders to Diego Garcia, being used to having indigenous people living alongside island military bases in the Pacific.

  • David Ramsbotham – 2022 Comments on the Queen’s Speech (Baron Ramsbotham)

    David Ramsbotham – 2022 Comments on the Queen’s Speech (Baron Ramsbotham)

    The comments made by David Ramsbotham, Baron Ramsbotham, in the House of Lords on 12 May 2022.

    My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. I have three points to make. First, as other noble Lords have said, I deplore the number of times we were asked by the Commons response to our amendments to a number of Bills in the previous Session to break the rule of law. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, did the decent thing and resigned from the Government over the issue. I suggest that the Government Whips and those who voted in favour of the Commons rejection of our amendments ought to examine their consciences to see how happy they are to have voted for so many breaches of the law.

    Secondly, in the gracious Speech, mention is made of a Bill of Rights. Are the Government really happy about this, when the Secretary of State for Justice, who is presumably responsible for its introduction, has expressed the view that human rights should not apply to prisoners?

    Thirdly, my noble friend Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick referred to a question I asked a number of times in the previous Session. My noble friend indicated that, in the 2019 Queen’s Speech, mention was made of a royal commission into the criminal justice system. As successive Ministers have made clear, this is obviously not going to happen—no announcement has been made of either the name of the chairman or the terms of reference, and the team formed inside the Ministry of Justice to handle the royal commission has been broken up. Surely, the Government should now do the decent thing and apologise to Her Majesty for asking her to make an announcement which they had no intention of implementing.