Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

Briefly, I say thank you very much to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, who obviously has an intimate and empathetic relationship with the prison estate and the issues that I was raising. I appreciate that he and I share very similar concerns. The difficulty is—I do not think it is just the hour—that the Bill says it will resolve things in relation to prisons but, actually, the discussion around prisons has been rather neglected. I understand why. The reason I mentioned Mr Calocane is that a lot of the issues in the community and a lot of the public debate about mental health concern the notion of people being ill, wandering around, not being safe and so on and so forth, and I could not think of another way of raising that here. That then affects the prison estate, because people phone the police and then people get taken to prison—or they have been let out of prison when they are mentally ill, and so on and so forth. That is one thing. It requires much greater scrutiny and debate, not just through this Bill but in general in Parliament: that is the first thing. I also think that we have not got public opinion our side on this, in many ways. People are not sure why people are sent to prison in some instances and to hospital in another. I do not expect the Minister to reply, but I think that needs to be acknowledged. Secondly, I note that, even though I used the example of Five Wells prison, if all the awful things were not happening there, it was based on prison officers’ experiences in many places. I do not want in any way to put the prison into any difficulties, because it is actually doing a very good job in very difficult circumstances. I will just say that I think that, on paper, this Bill will make a small impact, but I think there is much further that it could go. I am glad to hear that different groups will be taken seriously. I withdraw the amendment, but I think we have a long way to go and I will keep pursuing this. I thank noble Lords who spoke in support; I really appreciate that.