Archer keeps his counsel

by Jackie Storer BBC News Online political staff

Norman Stanley Fletcher, the loveable old lag of Porridge fame, would have batted the question away with a roll of the eyes and a witty riposte.

In his cockney twang, he would have probably nudged his gangly cell mate Godber and sighed: "Would you Adam and Eve it? They've not only given me time, but now they're taking away me title."

Lord Archer said he had received thousands of messages

But when a TV journalist had the audacity to put the poser to the noble Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, the look was withering, edged with not a little bemusement, but mostly, it seemed, contempt.

The courageous hack had even tried to keep in with the ex-Tory deputy chairman's theme of penal reform when he asked him if his own rehabilitation would "not now apparently include an opportunity to make a career in the House of Lords".

It was the only question the waiting media pack wanted an answer to: How did Lord Archer feel about government plans to strip him of his peerage and ban him from sitting in the House of Lords?

Lord Archer had attracted so much interest from the media, his gathering was moved to one of the city's poshest hotels

Perhaps a flickering memory of a past police interrogation skipped through his mind. Maybe he was adopting the old cons code of keeping schtum. But for all our pen-poised anticipation, former prisoner FF8282 was not going to give us a response.

Instead, he quickly returned to the question he wanted to answer from Joe Murray, of the Institute of Criminology, who had politely asked about prison provision for contact between inmates and their families.

"In reference to the question by Miss or Mr Murray ... I would think people consider a visit from their families the highlight ..." said Lord Archer sombrely.

Obviously a visit from the Fourth Estate would not be greeted with the same warmth.

'Posh' hotel

It was a disappointing moment for the amassed press corps who had taken an away day break out to the dreaming spires of Oxford for the sole purpose of quizzing one of the country's wealthiest former jailbirds.

His heavily trailed speech, which called for radical changes to the prison system, education for inmates ahead of release, less severe punishments for those caught smoking pot and a speedier way of categorising prisoners, came at the end of a two day conference organised by the Howard League for Penal Reform.

A month is a very long period of time when you are locked up in a cell with two other prisoners for 22 hours a day Lord Archer

Most of the sessions - which were to have included an address from Prisons Minister Paul Goggins (until he caught sight of the guest list, perhaps?) - had been held at New College, Oxford.

But Lord Archer had attracted so much interest from the media, his gathering was moved to one of the city's poshest hotels, the Randolph.

Even as reporters descended on the plush Beaumont Street establishment, Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, was ensuring Lord Archer's views on the prison system would not be the reason his name appeared in the next day's papers.

No response

Instead, he announced the government's intention to strip peerages from those convicted of a criminal offence - and this would be retrospective. .

As Lord Archer tried to wade through the media to the hotel with his son William, he was asked how he felt about soon becoming "Mr Archer", but the query met with no response.

However, the peer's future status had perhaps not been lost on the Howard League, because a copy his speech that was handed to the press, described him simply as "Jeffrey Archer".

Even before he took the podium in one of the hotel's chandelier lit conference rooms, the League's press team had advised us that Lord Archer would only take written questions - and then it was up to him to choose whether to answer them.

Apologies

When "losing your title" was mentioned as a possible subject, one press officer said she already had loads of questions like that and another topic might meet a more favourable response.

Lord Archer swept into the conference room with little fuss, stressing that while he had no plans to become a prison reformer, he hoped the government and the opposition might consider his thoughts following two years in clink.

He dotted his speech with apologies to those people with more experience on his ideas which, he accepted, may have been considered many times

He dotted his speech with apologies to those people with more experience on his ideas which, he accepted, may have been considered many times.

Camera flashbulbs went off continually as he described his theories and drew on his own experience, at one point adding grimly: "A month is a very long period of time when you are locked up in a cell with two other prisoners for 22 hours a day."

He recounted a tale of a builder called Peter, banged up for motoring offences, who while 5ft 10ins and strongly built, "looking as though he could take it", had been fearful of falling asleep at night "in case he was injected with heroin by the drug baron".

Lord Archer said he had even discussed some of the "problems" with the deputy governor of Belmarsh, who was "a highly intelligent woman".

'Scared'

He told us that he did not smoke or take drugs and "rarely" drinks, but had been "naive" to the problems of narcotic use until his imprisonment.

He said he had received over 10,000 letters, cards and messages, but not one had suggested he had over-estimated the drug problem.

A nurse from Boston had even told him in a letter how he 21-year-old brother had been sentenced to six months for speeding offences at Lincoln Prison, but despite going in as a "scared young man", the family's devastation was compounded by his emergence as "a heroin addict".

On over-crowding in prisons, Lord Archer said he asked a similar question about staffing levels to guests at one of his dinner parties.

At the end of his speech, Dick Whitfield, the League's chairman, asked Lord Archer to present flowers to two members of the team that had helped organise the conference.

He then walked briskly out, with the press in tow, dived in to an adjacent room and as reporters stood outside for his reappearance, a workman opened a gate near the hotel allowing the peer's car to disappear quietly into the city traffic.