Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)

My Lords, I apologise for not having spoken at Second Reading; I was not present due to domestic circumstances. Had I been present, I would have spoken on the importance—following on from the remarks of noble Lord, Lord Foster—of addressing the problems that we have with those who are sentenced with addiction problems. Here, I have written down “whether it be drink, drugs, gambling, sex, sugar, smoking”, and so on—we find new addictions coming along all the time these days. In this group, I speak to Amendments 97 and 107. The purpose behind these probing amendments is fairly simple: to ensure that, for addicted prisoners who are released before they can be classed as well on the way to sobriety—this can cover gambling as well as drink and drugs—the Ministry of Justice will be prepared to provide funding, maybe from the prison education budget, to fund the admission of these prisoners into residential recovery and rehabilitation centres so that they can continue with their recovery. We saw with the recent early release programme that a number of prisoners released then who were in prison undertaking recovery courses—in particular, 12-step recovery courses—were then just simply released, and there was little follow-up in the maintenance of their recovery afterwards. Some of those prisoners, however, did find their way into some residential centres; it was only a small number, and they were funded mainly by charities or by the generosity of the centres that took them in. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned in the earlier debate, many of these centres are struggling. We have seen a reduction in the number of rehabs around the country by a half over the last 10 years; we have far fewer than we ever used to have. Many of the problems that they are encountering are, obviously, financial. Many of the patients they now take in are funded primarily by the major insurance companies; alternatively, they get support from charities. This really means that, increasingly, we are finding that those who are at the bottom end, who are not working and do not have insurance, or who have little funds themselves or do not have contact with charities, including prisoners, are finding it so difficult these days to get into residential recovery. What I am suggesting with these rather modest little amendments is that, when prisoners are released, if they are in recovery and have not completed their course, they should be permitted to go into residential centres if they are able to find those that are willing to take them, and that, in turn, the cost of their residential accommodation and treatment would be met out of a budget to be provided by the Ministry of Justice—I would suggest it should come out of its education fund as a way of finding the means. This would be money well invested. Hopefully, it would ensure people found sobriety and would break the cycle that we see so often of people going into prison due to their addiction, coming out, getting back in old company, drinking and drugging and gambling again, going around the circle and going back into prison again, which is extraordinarily costly to society. There is an opportunity, if we get people into a residential recovery, that not only do the prisoners benefit, but it benefits their family and the wider community in the best possible way. I hope the Minister is prepared to give some favourable consideration to these ideas.