The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice
(Lord Bellamy) (Con) My Lords, I will respectfully repeat the
Statement made yesterday in another place by my right honourable
friend the Lord Chancellor: “The first duty of any Government is to
keep their people safe, and that is why those who pose a danger to
society must be locked up. This Government are categorical that the
worst offenders should be locked away for as long as it takes to
protect the...Request free trial
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice
() (Con)
My Lords, I will respectfully repeat the Statement made yesterday
in another place by my right honourable friend the Lord
Chancellor:
“The first duty of any Government is to keep their people safe,
and that is why those who pose a danger to society must be locked
up. This Government are categorical that the worst offenders
should be locked away for as long as it takes to protect the
public. We have increased the sentences for offences including
knife crime, causing death by dangerous driving—now a maximum of
life imprisonment—and causing or allowing the death of a child.
We have ended automatic halfway release for serious sexual and
violent offenders, so they will serve two-thirds of their
sentence behind bars and, in the most dangerous cases, all of
their sentence behind bars. We are changing the law to make
whole-life sentences the default for the most heinous types of
murder, so that for society’s most depraved killers, life means
life and murderers end their days in prison.
Today, I can announce that we will be going further. We will
legislate so that rapists, as well as those convicted of
equivalent sexual offences, will serve the entirety of the
custodial term handed down to them by the courts. A 15-year
custodial term will mean 15 years behind bars.
There are inaccurate reports in the media, claiming that judges
have been told not to send rapists to prison. Let me be
categorical: this is untrue. Sentencing is a matter for the
judiciary acting impartially and in accordance with the rule of
law. It is a fact that under this Government the most serious and
dangerous offenders are being locked away for longer. In the case
of rapists, average sentences are nearly a third longer than in
2010. This is the right thing to do to keep the public safe.
To continue to put the worst offenders away for longer, we must
use prisons better, so that there are always sufficient spaces to
lock up the most dangerous criminals. We must reform the justice
system so that it keeps the worst of society behind bars,
rehabilitates offenders who will be let out and gives the least
serious, lowest-risk offenders a path away from a life of crime.
That matters, because intelligent reform means less crime.
I have been candid from the moment I took on this role that our
custodial estate is under pressure. Today, the prison population
in England and Wales is greater than it has ever been—nearly
double the level it was three decades ago. That is not
principally because of the growth in the sentenced population:
instead, it is the remand population, principally made up of
unconvicted prisoners awaiting trial, which has surged in recent
years, from 9,000 in 2019 to over 15,000 in 2023. That is more
than 6,000 more people in our prisons, out of a total of around
88,000. Why is that? It is because in the white heat of the
pandemic we took the right and principled decision not to
jettison hundreds of years of British history and abandon the
jury trial system. We did not do that because the jury trial
system is the bedrock of our freedoms. But, because of Covid
restrictions, that inevitably meant that the flow of trials
slowed and, in turn, the remand population grew. This growth was
exacerbated by industrial action last year. In addition, the
recall population is also significantly higher than in 2018,
partly because we are rightly ensuring that offenders who do not
comply with their licence conditions are returned to prison.
This Government have taken unprecedented steps to meet this
demand. We are building 20,000 modern rehabilitative prison
places—the largest prison-building programme since the Victorian
era. By doubling up cells where it is safe to do so, speeding up
the deportation of foreign national offenders and delaying
non-essential maintenance projects to bring cells back into use,
we have freed up an extra 2,600 places since September last year
alone. On top of this, we have continued to roll out hundreds of
rapid deployment cells at prison sites. Altogether, we have been
bringing on capacity at a rate of more than 100 places a week—the
fastest rate in living memory, and possibly in 100 years.
We are going further. Today, I can announce up to £400 million
for more prison places, enough for over 800 new cells. When we
legislate to keep rapists behind bars for the whole of their
custodial term, I will ensure that commencement is dependent on
there being sufficient prison capacity. There is already an
obligation to lay before both Houses of Parliament a report as to
the way I have discharged my general duty in relation to the
courts. To ensure public confidence, a new annual statement of
prison capacity will be laid before both Houses. It will include
a clear statement of current prison capacity, future demand, the
range of system costs that would be incurred under different
scenarios and our forward pipeline of prison build. That will
bring transparency to our plans and will set out the progress
that is being made. I have also already commissioned urgent work,
to conclude before the end of the year, to identify new sites for
us to purchase. This is backed by a down payment of up to £30
million in funding to acquire land in 2024 and launch the
planning process.
We must do whatever it takes to make sure that there are always
enough prison places to lock up the most dangerous offenders to
keep the British people safe, to ensure that criminals can be
brought to justice, and to maintain safety and decency in the
prison estate. We have decided to use the power in Section 248 of
the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to allow the Prison Service to move
some lower-level offenders out of prison on to licence up to 18
days before their automatic release date.
Let me be clear: this will not apply to anyone serving a life
sentence, anyone serving an extended determinate sentence, anyone
serving a sentence for an offence of particular concern, anyone
convicted of a serious violence offence, anyone convicted of
terrorism or anyone convicted of a sex offence. This new power
will be used only for a limited period and only in targeted
areas. Every offender will be placed under strict licence
conditions that provide a step down from custody to living in the
community. This may include: first, being made to wear an
electronic tag when needed to manage them safely; secondly, a
condition not to contact a named individual, directly or
indirectly; thirdly, having to live at an address approved by the
probation officer; fourthly, attending appointments; and fifthly,
a condition not to enter certain areas, such as particular
postcodes. Breach of these conditions could lead to the offender
being recalled to custody for the entire second half of their
sentence.
This will be overseen by the Probation Service—a Probation
Service into which we have injected £155 million a year to
recruit staff to bring down case loads and deliver better
supervision of offenders in the community. In addition, the HMPPS
leadership will retain discretion to decide on further exemptions
from release on advice of governors where concerns remain. Let me
make it clear that this is a temporary operational measure to
relieve immediate pressure contributed to by remand.
If we are to protect the public and reduce crime, we need to go
further to use our prisons better. At the heart of the long-term
plan for prison reform that I am announcing today is a simple
mission: cut crime. To deliver that, there are three things we
need to do. First, we need to ensure that the most dangerous
offenders are locked up for longer, away from the public and
unable to commit crime. Secondly, we need to ensure that prisons
are geared to help offenders turn away from crime, to change
their ways and to become contributing members of society.
Thirdly, we need to ensure that more low-level offenders get the
tough community sentences that the evidence shows cut reoffending
and therefore cut crime.
To put that last point another way, prisons should not ruin the
redeemable. It is clear that, all too often, the circumstances
that lead to an initial offence are exacerbated by a short stint
in prison, with offenders losing their homes, breaking contact
with key support networks and, crucially, meeting others inside
prison who steer them in the wrong direction. When they are
released just a short time later, they all too often reoffend,
fuelled by addiction or mental health issues that cannot possibly
be addressed effectively in such a short space of time. The fact
is that over 50% of people who leave prison after serving less
than 12 months go on to commit further crimes. The figure is 58%
for those who serve sentences of six months or less. However, the
reoffending figure for those who are on suspended sentence orders
with conditions is 22%.
Meanwhile, the cost of this is £47,000 per year per prisoner. The
taxpayer should not be forking out for a system that risks
further criminalising offenders and trapping them in a
merry-go-round of short sentences, so this Government are
determined to grasp the nettle and deliver a better approach. We
will legislate for a presumption that custodial sentences of less
than 12 months in prison will be suspended and offenders will be
punished in the community instead, repaying their debt within
communities, cleaning up our neighbourhoods and scrubbing
graffiti off walls. We can do this more intelligently with modern
solutions for a digital age.
I can announce today that we are doubling the number of GPS tags
available to the courts, to ensure that offenders can be
monitored, to track that they are going to work and to ensure
that their freedom is curtailed in the evenings and at weekends,
with robust curfews of up to 20 hours a day. We will make maximum
use of new technologies such as alcohol monitoring tags. This
will enable us to strengthen and expand successful step-down
programmes such as home detention curfews, which we will keep
under active review. If offenders breach the terms of their
curfew or other requirement of their suspended custodial
sentence, or commit another offence, they can be hauled back
before the court and forced to serve that sentence in prison.
What we are not doing is getting rid of short sentences
altogether. I know from my time as a prosecutor that sometimes
that is the right and just option. Prolific offenders who are
unable or unwilling to comply with community orders or other
orders of the court must know that their actions have
consequences, and they will continue to feel the full force of
our justice system. Building on our Anti-Social Behaviour Action
Plan, the Home Secretary and I are looking at what more we can do
to punish those so-called lower-level offenders who are a blight
on our communities. For some offenders, the proper sanction is, I
am afraid, the clang of the prison gate.
We will also remove foreign offenders who should not be in the UK
taking up space in our prisons at vast expense to the taxpayer.
There are over 10,000 foreign nationals in our prisons. It cannot
be right that some of them are sitting in prison when they could
otherwise be removed from our country. That is why we will extend
the early removal scheme so that we have the power to remove
foreign criminals up to 18 months before they are due to be
released—up from 12 months now—getting them out of the country
early and no longer costing taxpayers a small fortune.
To support that, more caseworkers will be deployed to speed up
removals, and the Home Office will also look at measures to do
more to remove foreign nationals accused of less serious crimes
more quickly. We will continue to strike new prisoner transfer
deals like the one agreed with Albania, ensuring that criminals
from overseas serve their time at home rather than in Britain. We
will bring forward legislation to enable prisoners to be held in
prisons overseas—an approach taken by Belgium, Norway and Denmark
in recent years.
More must be done to stop people spending long periods waiting in
prison for their trials. As I have set out, there are now more
than 15,000 defendants on remand in our prisons. Remand decisions
are properly for independent judges, but we will consider whether
to extend the discount to encourage people to plead guilty at the
first opportunity. When more offenders plead guilty, that saves
time in the courts and cuts the number of people in our prisons
on remand. Most importantly, it saves victims the ordeal of
giving evidence in court.
We will also review the use of recall for offenders on release
who infringe the terms of their licence. It is right that
ex-prisoners who commit new crimes or serious breaches while on
licence should be returned to prison. We want to ensure that the
system is working effectively to mitigate any risk posed by
offenders while not having people in prison on recall longer than
necessary.
I turn to IPPs. We will take decisive action to address sentences
of imprisonment for public protection. We put a stop to these
discredited sentences a decade ago, but there remain around 3,000
IPP prisoners in custody despite their original tariff expiring
years ago. IPPs are a stain on our justice system, so I am
looking at options to curtail the licence period to restore
greater proportionality to IPP sentences in line with
recommendation 8 of the Justice Select Committee’s report, and I
will come back to the House on that in due course. This will not
compromise public safety. Those found by the Parole Board to pose
a risk to the public will not be released.
In conclusion, as I have set out, we are taking decisive action
to make our prisons work better in the long term. We are building
more prison places than at any time since Disraeli was speaking
from this Dispatch Box. We are rolling out hundreds of rapid
deployment cells across the country to increase immediate
capacity. We are going further and faster than ever before to
remove foreign criminals from our prisons.
To govern is to choose. We choose to lock up the most dangerous
criminals for longer to protect victims and their families. We
choose to reform the justice system so that criminals who can
otherwise be forced into taking the right path are not trapped in
a cycle of criminality. This is the right long-term plan for our
justice system, and I commend this Statement to the House”.
3.36pm
(Lab)
I thank the noble and learned Lord for repeating yesterday’s
Statement. In broad terms, the Government aspire to increase the
time spent in prison for some serious offenders and to reduce the
chances of a prison sentence for less serious offenders. The Lord
Chancellor put forward this package of proposals to address the
immediate and entirely predicted crisis in our prison estate; it
is full because of the mismanagement of the current Government
over their whole period in office.
The Government’s mismanagement goes beyond the prison estate to
the Probation Service. There has been a substantial decline in
courts sentencing with community and suspended sentence orders
over the past 10 years: they have halved in 10 years, and that is
because of sentencers’ lack of trust in the robustness of
community orders. We in the Labour Party support an increased use
of community orders, but they require experienced probation staff
in post, properly organised, with challenging community work and
genuine community rehabilitation initiatives for them to work
effectively.
The Government’s approach to the Probation Service has had a
direct impact on the crisis and the overcrowding in the prison
estate. We support the use of more sophisticated tagging, GPS and
other more specialised tags, but they are no better than the
experience and professionalism of the people and organisations
that manage and monitor them. Can the Minister assure me that the
Probation Service will form an integral partner in the monitoring
and assessment of the effectiveness of tags?
Talking as a magistrate and sentencer, I can tell the noble and
learned Lord that I very rarely sentence an offender of previous
good character to prison. Far more often, the offender has a
history of community sentences that have failed for one reason or
another; therefore, the sentencer feels that there is no choice
but to give a custodial sentence, sometimes a relatively short
one, to mark both the seriousness of the offence and the lack of
impact of previous community orders. Therefore, I fear the
changes proposed by the Lord Chancellor will have relatively
little impact.
On Thursday, I will be speaking at the conference of the National
Association of Probation Officers, which represents the
profession which has been under siege by the current Government.
Will the Minister explain how the proposals in this Statement
will rebuild the Probation Service so that pressure can be taken
off the prison estate?
There has been much comment in the press in recent days about the
advice to judges to delay sentences to mitigate prison
overcrowding. My understanding is that this applies to Crown
Court cases where an offender has been found guilty or pleaded
guilty and has been given bail by the judge pending a sentencing
report from probation. My question to the Minister is how long
this delay is going to be. Will it be weeks or months? The Lord
Chancellor has said it will apply only to less serious offenders,
but we are dealing with Crown Court matters and these, by their
very nature, are more serious. What guarantee can the Minister
give that no sexual offenders or violent offenders will be
walking our streets as a result of this delay? Will victims of
these offenders be informed of the delay to sentencing?
I now turn to the Government’s programme to build new prisons.
HMP Five Wells came on stream last year, and a second new prison
is expected to come on stream relatively soon. When might we
expect it to be active? A further three new prisons are stuck in
the planning process: when might these other three prisons expect
to come on stream? Multiple timetables have been published: where
are we in this process?
On top of this, HMPPS is adding portakabins to the existing
prison estate. I understand these are actually quite popular with
prisoners because they have en suite facilities, but they add
complexity and manpower requirements to the prison officers
required to run the prison. How much will these portakabins
mitigate the capacity issue in our prison estate?
We are also being told that the Lord Chancellor is looking at
renting overseas prison capacity to mitigate the current crisis.
How much will this cost, and how will this contribute to offender
rehabilitation, where contact with family and friends is seen as
being of primary importance to reduce the chances of reoffending
on release?
On the deportation of foreign national offenders, last year the
Government managed to deport 2,958 foreign national offenders.
This is less than a third of the total number in our prisons and
around half the annual number before the Covid pandemic. Why
should the public believe the Government when they claim they can
get a grip on the number of foreign national offenders in our
prisons, when they have failed to do so until now? What
difference will bringing forward deportation of foreign national
offenders by six months make to the prison population, and by
when?
I now turn to extradition. Earlier this year, I asked a Written
Question about some German courts refusing to extradite prisoners
to the UK because of concerns about the state of British prisons.
On 30 May, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, answered my Question and
wrote that while HMG does not comment on extradition requests,
they do respond to requests for assurances from foreign states in
relation to the matters I raised in my Question. Since then,
there have been a number of further articles in the press where
both German and Irish courts have refused extradition requests on
the basis of the state of British prisons. This is a quality
issue, not a capacity issue. Can the Minister comment on the
assurances which his department gives to foreign states that our
prisons are indeed fit, decent and suitable to receive extradited
prisoners?
There is a lot of detail in the Statement. I have commented on
some but not all elements of it. The necessity for this Statement
is a culmination of systemic long-term underinvestment over many
years. I cannot help thinking that the recently appointed Lord
Chancellor has received something of a hospital pass in taking on
his new role. The noble Lord opposite is in the same situation
too. Can I ask the noble Lord about any consultation on their
proposals and the timetable for bringing them in?
(LD)
My Lords, I welcome this Statement, in part at least, and I thank
the Minister for making the time to discuss it with me yesterday.
However, we profoundly regret the circumstances in which it came
to be made.
At last, the Government recognise the disgraceful state of our
prisons—with a current population of 88,000 and only 500-odd
places unfilled across the estate and with serious overcrowding
within that population. It is not all down to Covid, more remand
and recall prisoners and industrial action. Indeed, the Statement
itself points out that the prison population in England and Wales
has nearly doubled over three decades. That is made worse by
serious understaffing, dismal morale and, in consequence, a
failure to recruit and retain enough prison staff.
Some of these measures we have long been calling for. We welcome
the presumption against damaging short sentences, which are shown
to be hopelessly ineffective, with sky-high reconviction rates
and no chance of addressing mental health and addiction issues or
training or preparation for employment. We welcome recognition of
the need to concentrate on rehabilitation and reform and greater
use of community and suspended sentences, but these must be
supported, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said, by probation
and community services that are fully resourced and in overall
operation.
However, much of this Statement just sets out panic measures from
a panicked Government who have simply run out of prison space,
despite all the warnings: doubling up in already overcrowded
cells; the so-called “rapid deployment cells”, which the noble
Lord, Lord Ponsonby, called portakabins—read “makeshift prefab
temporary cells” with, importantly, no extra supporting services;
cancelling maintenance projects that are essential to improve
squalid conditions; and indiscriminate 18-day early release
determined by the location where the prisoner is serving, not the
prisoner’s suitability. Even worse, we are still resorting to
using police cells, which are totally unsuitable for housing
prisoners.
This Statement talks of giving the least serious, low- risk
offenders a
“path away from a life of crime”.
However, all prison sentences should offer that—and to extend the
metaphor, such a path needs to be properly planned, well
supported and fully paid for, not just hurriedly hacked out of
the undergrowth, to find a way out of a mess.
The long-term prison building plan is now way behind schedule, so
I ask the Minister some questions about the Government’s plans
for the medium term. Given that sentence inflation is in part
fuelled by government policy, do they have other plans to reverse
the inexorable rise in the prison population? What proposals do
they have to cut the backlog in the courts to reduce the overload
from remand prisoners? What exactly is proposed for an urgent end
to the disgraceful extended incarceration of IPP prisoners? What
changes are proposed to target recall—to moderate its use, which
is often unmerited and should be specific and only used when
needed? How do the Government propose to avoid shuffling
prisoners around the prison estate to fill every available space,
without regard for prisoner needs and welfare—in particular, the
need for contact with their families and communities before
release?
More importantly, what greater resources are proposed for the
probation services so that community sentences work? The
Statement claims credit for a past increase in funding but says
nothing about the extra funding that will be needed to meet the
increased demand resulting from these measures.
(Con)
My Lords, I will deal as best I can with the points made.
Hospital pass or not, the Government have to deal with the
situation in which they find themselves. On the question of how
we got here, the Government have embarked on the largest
prison-building programme since Victorian times. To answer the
specific questions, I say that Five Wells is open, Fosse Way has
recently been opened, Millsike is under construction and I think
three other prisons are currently embroiled in the planning
process. However, we have spent £1.3 billion on prison
construction and at some point the society in which we live has
to ask itself, “How much money? Where is the balance to be struck
between prison building and other approaches?”
In addition to the various measures I mentioned, including the
so-called portakabins or rapid deployment cells, which have
proved an important means of ameliorating conditions in some
prisons, the Government have taken quite a number of actions and
we have done our utmost to keep the available capacity to meet
the need, despite the unprecedented pressure arising mainly from
the remand population, without which I do not think we would have
the problem that we have. Therefore I respectfully defend the
Government’s record in this regard.
As regards the very important question of the Probation Service,
which both noble Lords raised, it has needed additional resources
and, frankly, a degree of rebuilding in the last years, which the
Government have been doing their best to do. We are expending an
additional £155 million a year on the Probation Service, and I am
told that we have exceeded the recruitment target in each of the
last three years and recruited 4,000 trainee probation officers
over the last three years. Of course, recruiting a trainee
probation officer does not mean you immediately have a fully
fledged, experienced probation officer at hand to take on very
difficult tasks. I accept that from this House, which very much
knows what it is talking about, but the Government are in the
process of strengthening and rebuilding the Probation Service,
which—to answer the question I think from the noble Lord, Lord
Ponsonby —will indeed be, and has to be, an integral partner in
the new programme.
As the noble Lord pointed out, there will still be cases where
there is no alternative to a short sentence of less than 12
months, in which case the presumption is rebutted. Let us hope
that, in recalibrating and reorientating the culture, that really
is the last resort and that the number of short sentences
declines dramatically. The figures speak for themselves, with 55%
reoffending on short sentences but only 22% reoffending on
suspended sentences with proper conditions that are properly
enforced and calibrated to that particular offender. Those are
striking facts. The Government’s hope and intention is that we
move towards the latter from the former. I venture to suggest
that noble Lords would not disagree with the general direction of
travel that I have tried to convey.
As to the question of the delay in sentencing that was reported
last week, this announcement came from the judiciary. It is
indeed up to the judiciary to deal with sentencing, but I
anticipate that the need for any delay in sentencing will
diminish fairly rapidly after our intermediate step relating to
the early release from custody subject to licence, so that we can
get back to normal management and the courts no longer have to
worry about whether there is sufficient prison capacity. I hope
that becomes a temporary problem and is no longer of concern.
As regards foreign national offenders, I cannot give the noble
Lord an exact estimate of what difference the change in the
period from six months to 18 months will make. We also need to
uprate the Home Office team that deals with this and reorganise
the relevant procedures, but it should result in at least some
numbers, which I am not able to clarify. I can do further
research and write to him if that would be useful. If you can
imagine 10,000 out of 88,000, that is a very substantial number
of foreign national offenders in our system. We should be able to
do something effective to reduce that pressure, not least with
agreements such as that with Albania for prisoners to serve their
sentences in their home jails.
As far as the extradition cases are concerned, I am obviously not
able to comment on any specific cases, whether from Germany,
Ireland or elsewhere. I respectfully disagree with the idea that
there is a difference between a quality issue and a capacity
issue because I think capacity and quality are intertwined,
especially if there is a problem with overcrowding et cetera, but
the Government’s position is that our prisons are fit and decent
from the point of view of our request to extradite persons to
this country, and I anticipate that these reforms will enable us
further to reinforce the fitness and decency of the prison estate
in this country.
As far as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, is concerned, again no
Government would have wished to be in this position, but we have
to deal with it as it is. The measures that the Government have
taken on employment and rehabilitation, which include, as I think
I have said on previous occasions, employment boards in each
prison with local employers—there is more or less a jobcentre in
Berwyn prison in Wales—the provision of 12 weeks’ accommodation
and the digital passport with a bank account, a national
insurance number and so forth, have led to a substantial
improvement in rehabilitation and a drop in the reoffending rate
from about 32% a few years ago to just under 25% now, which is
some progress in very difficult circumstances bearing in mind the
kinds of prisoners one is dealing with.
We will come back to IPP. In the medium term let us progress with
these reforms and keep them under review. We will now be
reporting to Parliament annually, so that will give a new and
more transparent opportunity to develop and share the problems,
which I venture to suggest are problems that we ought to share
rather than problems that are of—shall I say?—a party-political
nature.
3.59pm
(PC)
Is the Minister aware of the very serious problems concerning the
recruitment and retention of staff at HMP Berwyn, at Wrexham, one
of the newest prisons and the second largest in Europe? It is
reported that the staff will not stay because working conditions
are intolerable. What are the Government going to do to remedy
this?
(Con)
My Lords, I am not in a position today to comment specifically on
Berwyn. I had understood that there are many aspects of Berwyn
that have been outstandingly successful. I will write to the
noble Lord with more detail in response to his question.
(Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of NHS England’s
non-custodial advisory board. I welcome the plan to significantly
reduce short-term sentences and replace them with community
sentences. Currently, a rollout of community sentences with
mental health treatment orders is under way across the country
into every court. However, to give further confidence to the
judiciary, will the Minister ensure that there is a significant
increase in capacity not only in the Probation Service, about
which we have heard, but in mental health provision, both primary
and secondary, as well as alcohol and substance misuse services,
to ensure that people can successfully complete their community
sentence?
(Con)
My Lords, it is undoubtedly the case that there are many
offenders in the criminal justice system who have severe mental
health problems. I very much welcome the noble Lord’s reference
to the national programme in relation to mental health treatments
and I fully agree that this is a matter to which we need to pay
the closest attention. I will certainly discuss with colleagues
in the DHSC how we increase capacity to give judges the necessary
confidence.
(Con)
My Lords, my noble and learned friend is to be congratulated on a
very wide-ranging Statement. I have two very short questions to
put, if I may. One relates to the prison building programme. My
noble and learned friend referred to 20,000 additional places.
Has there been any slippage on provision of those places, perhaps
partly as a result of the Covid pandemic? I would be very
grateful if he could provide some detail of when those places
will come on board.
Secondly, my noble and learned friend quite rightly stressed the
importance of strict sentencing with regard to crimes of violence
and where there is a danger to the public. In relation to
rehabilitation, which he also rightly emphasised as being
important, provision by the courts of community service
orders—which are the main vehicle for delivering that—has slipped
by more than half in the last 15 years. What are the Government
doing to make sure that that level of use increases over the
coming months and years?
(Con)
My Lords, there has been some slippage in the prison building
programme, mainly as a result of difficulties with planning. As
the Lord Chancellor indicated in the Statement, there is a
renewed push to find new sites and reinvigorate that programme. I
am afraid that I cannot give the noble Lord any specific dates
but, as the Statement indicates, it is very much part of the
general package. As far as rehabilitation and the decline in
community service orders over the last 10 or 15 years are
concerned, that may well be connected to the problems that we
have had in the Probation Service. I would not presume to say
either way but, as I ventured to suggest a moment ago, we are
doing our best to restore the Probation Service to its detailed
place within the system. A renewed Probation Service will be an
integral part of the new programme; the service is currently
reconsidering its orientation and the deployment of its resources
to support the Statement that the Government have just made.
(CB)
My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said, so long as it is
actually carried out; implementation seems to me to be the most
important part. On dealing with often persistent but not
particularly serious crimes by drink and drug addicts, have the
Government thought of building, or creating, residential places
for these offenders, along with a probation order, so that if
they do not comply with it, they would go to prison?
(Con)
My Lords, I would need notice of that question. I will write to
the noble and learned Baroness with respect to the place of
residential places in the criminal justice system. Certainly, the
focus on dealing with alcohol and, indeed, drugs is very much on
the Government’s mind at the moment. One development in GPS
tagging is that you can use it for alcohol detection as well—that
is a further arrow in the quiver, as it were, to deal with this
problem—but the noble and learned Baroness’s question is entirely
apposite, as always.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, nine days ago it was my privilege to lead Sunday
worship at HMP Doncaster, where I was reminded by the chaplain
that many faith communities and charities do excellent work
supporting newly released prisoners as they resettle into their
communities, with a demonstrably positive impact on reoffending
rates. What more can be done to support such projects?
(Con)
The Government very much welcome the contribution that local
agencies and other organisations make towards rehabilitation and
will continue to take advantage of all the opportunities that
arise. If I may trouble your Lordships anecdotally for a moment,
I met a man the other day who had been a remand prisoner in
Winchester prison. He had been acquitted, so he was free. I
asked, “What was your experience in Winchester prison?” He said,
“I did very well, actually, because I was able to take the IT
course that they offered. I can now do an Excel spreadsheet and a
Word document, and I regard it as having been a positive
experience”. So it is not all doom and gloom.
(Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Statement, which avoids the trap of penal
populism and combines proportionality with pragmatism. However,
its three crime prevention strategies are all downriver. Can the
Minister explain what the Government are doing to prevent crime
before people offend in the first place, especially in the area
of strengthening families—a quarter of our prison population were
in local authority care—and reducing father absence, since 70% of
young offenders grew up in lone-parent families? Lastly, how are
the Government ensuring that families of prisoners get the help
they need in the community in order to reduce intergenerational
crime? Some 60% of children of convicted parents go on to offend
themselves.
(Con)
My Lords, as always, my noble friend makes a powerful point about
the importance of families, both in avoiding crime in the first
place and in supporting criminals who later return to the
community. The Government’s general approach to supporting
families is very much at the centre of our wider view of this
particular landscape, particularly through the DfE’s Supporting
Families programme, the family hubs, family courts and
particularly the FDACs. The noble Lord’s points are well taken
and will certainly be borne in mind as we continue.
(LD)
My Lords, the Minister rightly draws attention to the remand
prisoner population, which is considerably high in this country.
Has he looked at the international dimension and asked himself
the simple question: why is it possible for countries such as
Germany to regulate their remand population while we are looking
at sky-high figures? First, does he agree that less use of remand
in prison would have a tremendous impact on our prison
population? Surely the courts should send to prison only those
whose offending makes any other course unacceptable. Secondly,
those who are sent to prison should not stay there any longer
than necessary.
(Con)
I am not in a position to draw any comparison with Germany or any
other country. However, I am bound to say that we need to learn
as much as we can from the experience of other countries, so I
take the noble Lord’s point on that. I fully agree that no one
should be in prison for a moment longer than they need to be.
(CB)
My Lords, there appears to be a significant disparity between the
fines levied on people who broke the Covid regulations,
particularly for people under 30. Many of them have yet to
complete paying their fine. Can the Minister indicate whether His
Majesty’s Government will consider an amnesty for unpaid fines,
and possibly a rebate for those over £1,000, in order to ensure
that no one is imprisoned for the non-payment of fines, further
increasing the population in prison?
(Con)
My Lords, as your Lordships will understand, I cannot comment on
particular cases in which fines for Covid infringements have been
levied, nor am I in a position to say that the Government are
considering any amnesty in relation to any such fines.
(Con)
My Lords, one of the figures that I found most disturbing in my
noble and learned friend’s Statement was the increase in
prisoners on remand, from 9,000 to 15,000. Bearing in mind the
cost of keeping somebody in prison before they have been
convicted, what action are the Government taking to bring these
very disturbing figures under control and get them down
substantially?
(Con)
The main effort in getting remand numbers down is to do
everything possible to accelerate the process in the Crown Court.
We have recruited over 1,000 new judges and increased legal aid.
We are doing our very best to progress those cases through. As to
whether particular prisoners are on remand in the first place, as
distinct from being on bail, that is a decision for the
judiciary.
Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, in answer to a Written Question of mine, my noble and
learned friend the Minister said on 27 March:
“As of 31 December … there were 9,797 Foreign National
Offenders”.
He has announced today that that figure has now increased to be
nearer 10,000, so I very much welcome his determination to do
something about this. It should be said that in the 12 years
between 2010 and 2022, 22,707 foreign national offenders were
returned, which is a pretty slow rate. Does the Minister not
agree that there needs to be a cross-departmental task force to
deal with the return of foreign national offenders and address
issues such as translators in jails, the countries of origin and
particularly the legal profession, which has so often thwarted
attempts to repatriate some of these prisoners?
(Con)
My Lords, I fully agree that there needs to be close
interdepartmental co-operation in dealing with this difficult
issue.
(LD)
My Lords, there are many reasons why community sentences may be
far preferable to custody, but they do not come without cost.
They are more complex than
“cleaning up our neighbourhoods and scrubbing graffiti off
walls”,
in the words of the Statement. I think the Minister agrees that
services for treatments to address the mental health and
addiction problems of many offenders, generally provided by the
third sector, must be properly resourced, widely available and
centred on each individual. The Justice and Home Affairs
Committee of your Lordships’ House, which I chair, has heard
evidence of their underfunding alongside the overloading of the
Probation Service, which is very reliant on inexperienced staff.
Can I urge the Minister and the MoJ to have consultation with the
treatment providers? I commend to him the quite detailed written
and oral evidence which has been given to our committee.
(Con)
My Lords, I am sure the evidence before and the conclusions of
the committee will be borne well in mind.
(CB)
My Lords, although I support the Government’s general bid, which
is to reduce the prison population—it is too high, as the noble
Lord, , said, and we could probably
be safer even if some people were let out of prison—I do not
think that the Statement is entirely persuasive in a couple of
areas. First, it did not give an impact assessment of the
compound effect of the Government’s measures. What will the
prison population be in 12 months if all these measures are
implemented effectively? The second thing that worries me is
about the group of people who will now have to serve the full
term of their prison sentence, some of which we can entirely
understand. If you extend that list, how do those in the Prison
Service easily do their job? They have to have some hope that the
people who they are trying to control could have a shorter
sentence if they behave well. If that list grows, what happens is
that people who are in prison have no incentive to behave well
and the only people who can control them are the prison officers,
which makes a difficult life even more difficult.
My final point is that I do not entirely agree with the
Minister’s analysis of the growth in the prison population. Covid
has certainly played a role, but the prison population was
accelerating well before Covid. The two aggravating factors have
been the sentencing guidelines—which are always inflated and
never reduced, because there is no public clamour for less
sentencing, even if it is not effective—and the parole
conditions. Those are the two things that have caused the prison
population to expand. I am afraid that, if we carry on at the
rate we are, it can only get worse. Although the Sentencing
Guidelines Council is not a government-backed issue, it is
something that they can affect.
(Con)
My Lords, I will take the last point first. Clearly, sentencing
guidelines ought to be kept under constant review. At some point,
as I said earlier, the whole approach to prison and its
alternatives needs to be rethought, and perhaps fairly
fundamentally. The whole debate on how much we spend on building
prison capacity and how much we spend on support in the community
is one that we should have together; the Government do not
disagree with that.
On the noble Lord’s question about what effect these measures
will have, I cannot give him any immediate figures. The
short-term measures should certainly manage the short-term
problem; the longer-term measures will, over time, I hope, reduce
the prison population. As to it making life more difficult for
some because of an increase in the number of longer sentences, I
think that is an operational matter that HMPPS will, I hope, be
well-equipped to deal with.
(Con)
My Lords, I am sure the Government are right in thinking that the
expansion of community service is a very cost-effective way of
reducing the prison population. The problem is in its
implementation. It needs a great deal more vigour and rigour, but
above all else imagination. I suggest that the Government set up
an inquiry to look at world practices of community services, so
that we learn from what is done throughout the world and have
something much more imaginative than there is at the moment. It
is not, as another noble Lord said, a matter of picking up
litter. There is such scope for community service, and we are not
scratching the surface.
(Con)
My Lords, I am sure that a comparative study of the kind my noble
friend mentions would certainly be a valuable exercise. I
remember some years ago the former Lord Chief Justice, the noble
and learned Lord, , went on a
community service course. He pretended he was a convicted
solicitor and turned up on a Saturday morning with other people.
I think he came away somewhat perplexed by the complexity of
organising community service. You need quite a lot of intensive
resources, and, as the noble Baroness pointed out a moment ago,
it is quite expensive and difficult to do. Everybody thinks it is
a good thing, but how we deliver it is for further
discussion.
(LD)
My Lords, in the spirit of helpfulness, I wonder if I can help
the Minister with his overcrowding problem. As the Statement
said, there remain about 3,000 prisoners who have been sentenced
to indeterminate sentences—a sentence that was abolished over 10
years ago. The Minister’s announcement in the Statement that
there will be a cutting of the licence period for IPPs—a
recommendation of the Justice Committee—is very welcome. Could
the Minister cut the numbers on the prison estate much further if
he implemented the main recommendation of the Justice Committee
report to resentence those 3,000 people who are suffering the
daily torture of uncertainty, not knowing when their prison
sentence will end? Could the Minister look at that during the
Victims and Prisoners Bill?
(Con)
My Lords, it is the Government’s position, as I have set out,
that the resentencing exercise is not the answer. All the
prisoners of which we speak are there because the Parole Board
deems them unsafe for release. The Lord Chancellor’s Statement
mentions the possibility of some fairly drastic reforms to the
licence period. I am sure we will return to that, and to the
point of the noble Baroness, in more detail when the Victims and
Prisoners Bill reaches this House.
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