Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024
(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Lord Timpson
That the draft Order laid before the House on 17 July be approved.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
My Lords, following the Oral Statement which I repeated in this House on Wednesday 24 July, your Lordships will know that our prisons are in crisis. The male prison estate has been running at around 99% capacity for 18 months, undermining safety for staff and offenders and making the justice system vulnerable to unforeseen events. If we do not act urgently, our prisons will reach full capacity, and the justice system may grind to a halt. The courts would have to stop holding trials, the police would be unable to make arrests, and criminals would be free to act without consequence. If we do not act now, this will become reality by September. Taking immediate action is the only way to protect the public from a breakdown in law and order.
I want to assure your Lordships that we have explored all options. In the little time we have, we cannot build more prisons nor add more prison blocks. While we are deporting foreign national offenders as fast as is legally possible, this will not save enough places to address this crisis. Much of the pressure comes from the straightforward growth in the remand population—those who are in prison awaiting trial. While we are committed to making progress on remand, it would take time that we do not have. This has left us with only one option.
Before I set out the details, let me say that I am grateful to your Lordships for agreeing to bring this SI forward before the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has been re-formed and therefore able to consider it. As I have already set out, this change may be implemented with urgency. It has therefore been necessary to ensure that we have a full debate on the substance of the issues as soon as possible. I look forward to reading the committee’s report and that of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.
Returning to the SI that we are considering today, it will change the law so that prisoners serving eligible standard determinate sentences will have their automatic release point for those sentences adjusted to 40% rather than 50%. This will mean that around 5,500 offenders will be released in two tranches in September and October. They will leave prison early to serve the rest of their sentence under strict licence conditions in the community. Thereafter, all qualifying sentences will continue to be subject to the new 40% release point. This change applies to both male and female offenders. It also applies to some youth offences, specifically youth sentences under Section 250 of the Sentencing Act 2020, which are imposed on under-18s for more serious offences. They are included, because such offences are likely to end their term in the adult estate. However, as these sentences are for serious crimes, many are likely to be excluded from this measure, as I will go on to explain.
While this measure must address the crisis in our prisons, this must be balanced with public protection. Therefore, certain sentences will be excluded. The worst violent and sexual crimes, which are subject to a 67% release point, will not be eligible. Neither will serious violent offences subject to a sentence of four years or more under Part 1 of Schedule 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Sexual offences will be excluded, including offences related to child sexual abuse, and we will exclude a series of offences linked to domestic abuse, including stalking, controlling or coercive behaviour and non-fatal strangulation. National security and terrorism offences under the Official Secrets Act and the National Security Act 2023, and offences determined to have been carried out for a foreign power, will also be excluded, as will serious terrorism offences and terrorism-connected offences, which remain subject to a 67% release at the Parole Board’s discretion. No sentence subject to Parole Board release will be included. In each case, we have excluded specific offences rather than cohorts of offenders. That is a legal necessity. The power to make the SI applies to the release point of qualifying individual sentences, rather than to types of offender. In addition to these exclusions, there will be stringent protections in place around an early release.
This change to the law will not take effect until September. This has given our hard-working Prison and Probation Service a crucial eight-week implementation period to recalculate sentences and plan for the releases. Probation officers will have the time they need to assess the risk of each offender and prepare a plan to manage them safely in the community. Every offender released will be subject to the same stringent licence conditions they would have been if released at 50%. Where necessary, multi-agency public protection arrangements will be put in place to protect the public, as will multi-agency risk assessment conferences that consider how best to protect victims. Victims eligible for the victim contact scheme or the victim notification scheme will be notified about releases and developments in their cases, and, as now, they will be able to request licence conditions, such as non-contact requirements or exclusion zones to protect them from unwanted contact. Offenders will be ordered to wear electronic tags where required. Exclusion zones and curfews will be imposed where appropriate. If an offender breaks any of these conditions, they can be returned to prison.
The Government are clear that this change is not permanent. We will review it within 18 months of implementation, at the very latest in March 2026 when we believe that the situation in our prisons will have stabilised and we will be able to return the automatic point of release to 50% of a sentence.
I want to address directly the question of a sunset clause, which we have not included in this legislation, to end it automatically. We have pledged to be honest about the challenges in our prisons and the changes that we put in place to rise to them. Given the scale of the crisis, placing an artificial time limit on this measure would be irresponsible. We have taken the very deliberate decision not to reverse this measure until we are certain that prison capacity has stabilised.
We will introduce a new, higher standard of transparency. Every quarter we will publish data on the number of offenders released, and we will make it a statutory requirement for a prison capacity statement to be published annually, introducing this legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows. This is a departure from the approach of the previous Government, who introduced the end of custody supervised licence scheme, the ECSL scheme. They did not disclose the data, but now we know that more than 10,000 offenders have been released under ECSL.
When this new legislation takes effect we can end ECSL, which gave the Probation Service sometimes mere days to prepare for releases. That meant little time to assess the risk of offenders and plan how they would be managed safely in the community.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his position; this is the first time I have been able to debate with him. I hope he has plenty of time to sort out the mess of the prison system. I support the order; there is obviously no alternative to passing it.
The Minister touched on the reasons why that has occurred. My understanding is that the offender management unit in the Ministry of Justice calculates what the demand will be for prison places, taking into consideration all the changes in legislation. Anything that we do in legislation makes it change its calculation, and I am pretty confident that the unit told Ministers a long time ago that we had problems. One reason why I got involved in looking at the penal system was a debate initiated by Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood in 2017 on overcrowding in the prison system. We just let it go on and on until eventually we had to do something, which is exactly what the Minister is doing.
My only question is: is there any scope to do something about unnecessary recalls? Released prisoners can be recalled for fairly trifling bureaucratic reasons, which causes a lot of disruption and an increase in the prison population. Also, is there any scope to reduce the remand population, which the Minister mentioned? I look forward to supporting the Minister in his work.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it was a pleasure to hear the categories that will not be up for release, because nobody wants sexual predators and misogynists out on the streets—so I am delighted to hear that. But when the issue of prisons comes up, we always have to ask ourselves: what are they for? They ought to be for keeping dangerous people off the streets, but that is not what we do at the moment; we throw into prison an awful lot of people who should not be there. Through the Minister, this Government could think about changing who we put in prison because, quite honestly, the number of people going to prison is ludicrous when you think about some of the crimes they have committed.
Drug law reform is an obvious area. It seems absolutely ridiculous to put people in prison because of drugs offences when they have access to even more drugs there than they do out on the streets. Prisons are failing in that way, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister had to say about drug use in prison. Unfortunately, our new Prime Minister has indicated that he wants to continue the ideological war on drugs. Can the Minister at least review the evidence from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and publish its advice? The Conservative Government kept it secret because it called for the decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs.
It is good to hear about restorative justice, which is something further that that this Government could talk about. It is a voluntary process whereby people who have been harmed can work with the people who have caused the harm and perhaps identify how both parties can resolve or move on from it. We had amendments on this to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, so it would be good to hear the Government’s thoughts on this area.
Of course, if we are going to let people out of prison, we have to remember the scandal of the IPP prisoners. I was sad that the Minister did not mention them today because that category has clearly suffered the most incredible injustice. The legislation was designed to keep serious offenders in prison, but instead we ended up with nearly 3,000 people, most of them non-violent, trapped in prison. IPP prisoners turn to suicide and hunger strike. This is a legacy of the last Labour Government that the new Labour Government need to fix, as I pointed out.
One report says that someone got, in effect, 16 years in prison for stealing a flowerpot at 17. A prison sentence of 18 months should not turn into 18 years, which has also happened. It is no wonder that our prisons are overcrowded if we keep throwing people in there to rot for minor crimes. So do the new Government have a plan to work at pace to safely release IPP prisoners where possible? Is there a proposal for new legislation on this? We need the new Minister to sort out a plan on this. We need a resentencing programme to get the majority of IPP prisoners out of prison. Apart from that, I can say only, “Good luck”.
Lord Deben (Con)
I wonder whether I may ask a very simple question. I very much support what is being put forward, but in my history no Government have ever answered the simple question: how come Britain locks up so many more people than comparable countries in the rest of Europe? It seems pretty barmy. I do not feel any less safe in Paris or Berlin than I do in London, and yet both those countries do not lock people up in the way we do. It is a fundamental and simple question. I hope very much that we will pass this, of course, but I hope it will be in the context of the Government being the first of any political party—the previous Labour Government refused to look at this as well—to look at this fundamental question and ask themselves, “Why?”
The answer must be that there are better ways of doing what we are trying to do. If it means ignoring pressure from the Daily Mail, then I am afraid that is what we have to do. Given the brave statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer made today about cuts, it might be a very good opportunity for this Government to take a new look at why we lock people up.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord to the House and to his place on the Government Front Bench. He is getting an easier ride on this statutory instrument in your Lordships’ House than might be the case in a more populist environment, but I have no difficulty in lending my support to it as well. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I want to focus my few minutes on IPP prisoners.
It is clear, of course, that there are mathematical challenges involved in reducing from one percentage to another a quantum that starts out being indeterminate, and so a straightforward application of reducing from 50% to 40% the sentences imposed on IPP prisoners is not going to work. That is obvious and straightforward, but it does not mean to say that we should be passing by these prisoners when we consider this instrument, and yet that is in fact what we are doing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, gave some figures earlier. Your Lordships’ House is familiar with this scandal, and she described not only the numbers but the mental health issues people are suffering. I would add only two things. She did not mention—I am sure she would have, had she gone on—the mental health problems caused to the families of IPP prisoners, which are serious and persistent and have gone on for years, in many cases. Nor did she say, as has been said by other noble Lords—not least the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, on a number of occasions—that the root cause of these mental health problems does not arise from the prisoner himself, or in a few cases herself, but from what we have done through the criminal justice system to these people. It is on us that they have these mental health problems.
I read in the press—here, I am possibly setting myself up to be slapped down by the Minister—that the Minister has said that IPP prisoners cannot be included here because they are peculiarly, particularly or distinctly dangerous, as opposed to prisoners with determinate sentences. As I am sure he would agree, on reflection, that is simply not the case. What is distinctive about IPP prisoners is not the danger they pose but the nature of the sentence they are serving. There are far more dangerous people with determinate sentences who will be released at the end of their sentence, however dangerous they are, be it after 40%, 50%, 67% or 100% of their sentence. The doors of that jail will open and they will walk free, however dangerous they are. It is not the danger they pose to society that determines whether prisoners are released; it is the character of the sentence imposed on them, and that needs to be borne firmly in mind. With that in mind, I have three questions to put to the Minister. I will fully understand, of course, if he is not able to answer them today, and if he is not, I am sure he will want to take the opportunity to write.
The first question is—and this is crucial—will the Minister confirm that the implementation of the IPP action plan remains a top government priority, and a priority in his department, and that that has been communicated to officials? That is absolutely crucial: if the IPP action plan is to be carried forward and have effect, it has to be understood that Ministers are totally behind it—as, I think the Minister would acknowledge, the last set of Ministers were totally behind it before they left office.
Secondly, can the Minister give any indication as to when the Government will bring into effect those parts of the Victims and Prisoners Act, passed just before Dissolution, that relate to the licence conditions of IPPs and the term that they must serve on licence before the sentence is discharged, and the matter is related to executive release by the Lord Chancellor, and so forth? All those elements relating to IPP prisoners were agreed and passed in the Victims and Prisoners Act just a matter of weeks ago.
Lord Beith (LD)
We have all welcomed the Minister in three debates on three successive sitting days, so he has been thrown in at the deep end of parliamentary accountability. However, he has received some pretty sound advice from all the preceding speeches, including in the well-directed questions from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan.
Today what we are faced with from a parliamentary accountability point of view is not satisfactory. We know that the Government are caught in a difficulty whereby they have had to deploy a statutory instrument without it having gone to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, on which I have served. That is a shame, because that committee and its excellent team of advisers go through statutory instruments in great detail and sometimes find mistakes. They occasionally find mistakes that throw into question the validity of the instrument and the ability to enforce it, so I hope that extreme and extra care has gone into the drafting of this instrument, which is quite complicated. For example, there are 54 excluded offences, and many other complications affecting various categories of prisoner. So we hope that it is looked at very carefully—and, in a defect is found, we hope that the Government will come back at a later stage with a revised instrument.
What we have today is not a policy but a response. The Minister gave some indications of how policy might be developed, but we are not there—we are not at that point. We are simply observing a government response to a desperate crisis, which any incoming Government would dread—well, it is happening. It is the result of underinvestment and delayed investment in prison building over a long period and the constant rise in the number and length of custodial sentences, as well as the large rise, to which the Minister referred, in the number of remand prisoners, which itself is largely the result of the huge backlog in serious cases coming to court, as part of the wider chaos that we find in our criminal justice system. I ask the Minister: is it in fact the case, as alleged in the press, that sentencing hearings for prisoners on bail have been deliberately delayed to avoid further sentences sending people into our already overcrowded jails?
We have a prison population that is three times the level it was when I became a Member of Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, has referred to how that contrasts with other European countries, and I share his concern about the fact that it has happened and that it is so out of line with how most countries view the same problems of crime that we face. The announced prison building programme cannot solve the problem, although it is needed. We have to remember that, when the prison building programme that we have now was announced, much of it was intended to replace unsuitable and inadequate prison accommodation—not to add to the total stock but to replace accommodation that should not continue to be used.
We have a prison system that cannot house its prisoners and cannot rehabilitate them, and we have as a result a completely unacceptable level of violence against prison staff as well as prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
Nothing we are doing today will change this. We have to review the trend of the ever-increasing use of custody. For that to happen—here I repeat what I said last week—we need to strengthen community sentencing and the services necessary to make it effective. We also need to establish a measure of crime and its seriousness which does not make custody the only means by which society can assert its abhorrence of serious and persistent crime. That is fundamental to the problem we have at the moment: the only way society knows how to recognise and deal with crime, as is reflected in the media and in ordinary conversation, is to say that we are not going to put up with these dreadful crimes and so we should put people in jail for longer, even if it is not relevant to the rehabilitation of the offender when they are eventually released. We have to face up to that problem, and that is going to require real leadership, rather than party-political leadership. The Minister has a background that makes him well suited for this; I hope he is given the scope to carry out that kind of leadership.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I am intervening just to ask a question. The Minister used the word “stabilised” twice, I think, during his presentation of this instrument—he is looking forward to a stage when the Government can feel that the prison crisis has stabilised. Can the Minister explain a little more of what he means by the word “stabilised”? The point is this, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, made clear: we are sending too many people to prison, and therefore one of the ways of stabilising the problem is by addressing rigorously the overuse of prison as a means of punishing crime. I am sure the Minister is well-equipped to carry out that campaign.
The other feature of our present treatment of offenders, particularly serious offenders, is the length of the prison term. I was Lord Justice General in Scotland some years ago, when I had the task of reviewing the tariffs to be imposed on discretionary life prisoners. These are people who, unlike murderers, were sentenced to life imprisonment because of the gravity of the crime they had committed. The average tariff I was imposing in line with what was the current practice then—this was about 20 or 30 years ago—was something like 11 years; now, it is way above that, at 17 or 18 years, or more, and lengths of sentences are going up into the 30s. In my time as Lord Justice General, such lengths of sentences were quite unimaginable, and I am not sure it is doing any good except to keep people in prison longer than ever before. That is why the crisis has grown. There is a fundamental problem that has to be addressed, and I urge the Minister to explain what he means by “stabilise”. Perhaps the Minister could also address more closely—not today, and not even in writing to me, but later, in discussion with officials—how the problem can be corrected, so that we do not find ourselves in two years’ time facing the same crisis we are facing today.
Beyond that, I commend the drafting of the regulation. I think a great deal of thought has gone into the measure. It has been carefully thought through and, as a means of dealing with the crisis, it is exemplary. However, it is the underlying problem that must be addressed, not the particular crisis itself.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his appointment and wish him well. I assure him that many people in the House will be anxious to assist him, so that we can move away from the inevitable decade-on-decade increase in the number of people in prison. When the last Government went out, we had 87,000 people in jail, and we now have 97,000 people in jail. I do not think there is any point in pointing to any party-political basis; we should be seeking to come together to take a longer view. I share precisely the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Deben: when we look at what is happening in Europe, why are we so different?
If the Netherlands has got empty spaces in its jails, why are we not sending some prisoners there? If Denmark has got empty spaces in its jails, why are we not sending some prisoners there? That is not to say that I think we should be about sending prisoners elsewhere; we should be about trying to get to the fundamentals behind what happens with criminal acts, and looking then at how we deal with people. We need to try to find a more civilised way of handling many of the cases in which people need not go to jail.
In particular, I get increasingly concerned about the problems we encounter with mental health within jails. I know a number of people working in jails from different angles, and the constant complaint is that there are so many people there who should not be in jail but who should in fact be cared for on a mental health basis rather than being incarcerated.
I have a couple of questions there, including on whether we can export people temporarily. I support the statutory instrument, but I hope that the Minister might be able to say that it is high time that we did not just have a review of the reasons why we have our current problems but that we in fact have an all-party approach to try to get a longer-term analysis of our fundamental difficulties, and of what new and more civilised steps can be taken. Then at least, stability could come from not increasing from the present numbers when we review this in 10 years’ time, and within the Government’s five-year period we might have a proper analysis of the underlying causes and a real strategy devised where we could all come together to work for a better life in the future.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I first thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, for explaining the purpose of these regulations. As the House recalls, we had a repeat of the Statement on prison capacity that my noble and learned friend Lord Stewart of Dirleton responded to on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. This has been a fascinating debate, with, in fact, some great and fascinating contributions from all around the House, including from the Conservative Benches.
There are a number of matters that I would like to raise with the noble Lord. In the repeat of the Statement last week, his noble friend Lord Blunkett raised a very important point relating to the pressures being put on local communities. As he said, it poses for local communities
“the very real challenge of additional large numbers being released”.—[Official Report, 24/7/24; col. 513.]
As the Minister said himself, he had seen for himself people leaving prison with no one to meet them and nowhere to live. If this policy is to work, this will put further pressure on the system, so the funds must be made available to ensure that a decent start can be given to these individuals. Without doubt, there will be a demand for more funding through DWP and MHCLG. I wondered if the Minister has anything more to add on this subject.
Until when will the new 40% release point be applied? To say that it will apply until it is no longer needed, or until it is reversed, says nothing. The Ministry of Justice has projections of how many prisoners would be released earlier under this measure; we are told about 5,000 in September and October, and also an estimate of the incoming flow of prisoners. The department must have a working assumption of how long the measure will be needed. It would be good if the Minister could tell me what that estimate is.
We were told last week that there will be a review at the 18-month point. Will the Minister confirm that the current plan is for the release point to go back to 50% at that time? Will he confirm that he will be able to report to Parliament immediately if that plan changes? Notwithstanding what the Minister said on the criteria to be set for ending the policy, would it not be better that a sunset clause to the regulation was used, such that the Government would have to come back to report to Parliament to explain why a further period of release at the 40% mark is required?
As the Minister said, offenders will be subject to strict licensing conditions. Will these be more onerous than the licence conditions to which they would have been subject if released at the 50% mark? If so, how will they be different? Or will they be the same licence conditions but just imposed at the 40% mark?
The Minister also noted that tags would be used where required. We are told that the offenders can be ordered to wear electronic tags and that curfews will be imposed where appropriate. Will all prisoners released at the 40% mark be required to wear a tag, at least until they reach the 50% mark? Will such prisoners also be subject to a curfew for that period, or are we being told that tags and curfews are available, which we know, but will not be routinely imposed on this cohort?
Will the Minister be able to report to Parliament if any serious crimes are committed for those released at the 40% mark? Will His Majesty’s Government confirm that there are no plans for any further or earlier release of any other cohorts of prisoners?
This debate has been very useful. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this important debate, and I look forward to answering as many questions as I can. I will of course go back and look at Hansard, and if there is anything I have not answered, I will endeavour to write. As noble Lords have already pointed out, I have had quite a busy few days and I am learning fast, so I ask your Lordships to please bear with me if I am not quite as smooth as other noble Lords have been today.
I will start with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on recall. Recall is used only when necessary to protect the public. I see no reason to believe that it is being used inappropriately. This week, I went to two prisons to meet the offender management units to see how they were getting on with the important work they are doing. While they were very busy, I got the distinct feeling that they were on top of things and very much prepared for the hard work.
The noble Lord, Lord Beith, mentioned remand. We are very aware that the remand population has seen significant growth, and it is a significant issue. It has grown from about 9,000 to 16,000 prisoners. However, making changes to the remand cohort in a way that respects the individual decision by the judiciary will take time to implement. Unfortunately, we do not have much time.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, the noble Lords, Lord Deben, Lord Beith and Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, talked about who goes to prison. I thought I would mention the sentencing review that we are planning. That will take place as soon as possible. That will, I hope, be an opportunity for noble Lords to discuss and debate where we are going on sentencing.
One point raised by a number of noble Lords was around IPP prisoners. That is not something that is covered by this instrument. If it is satisfactory, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, with the exact detail, because this is so new to me and I do not want to get anything wrong at this early stage of my career in this House. IPP prisoners is an area that troubles me deeply. I have been going to prisons for over 20 years, and every time I go into an establishment, I always try to sit in a cell and talk to a man or a woman who is an IPP prisoner. In fact, I sat next to an IPP prisoner on Thursday. They all have a different story. Most of them suffer from multiple challenges; most of them feel lost; many of them are institutionalised. We have a duty to help them live a law-abiding life outside, but it is challenging. We are making progress, and this is one of the areas I want to make further progress on quickly. I assure noble Lords that it is at the top of my in-tray every day.
On the subject of prison building, which the noble Lord, Lord Beith, talked about, it is important, and we are committed to building new modern and safe prisons. For me, one of the advantages of new prisons is that they have the facilities required to help people gain skills and education, so that when they are released they have the skills and confidence that make them more attractive to an employer.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, asked what I meant by “stabilised”. Even though I have been going round prisons for many years, I have been trying to remember when I last felt that a prison was stable. It was probably the category D prisons, up until the last year, where they often had spare capacity and you felt that they were very much on the right side of panic. However, where a prison is 99% full, it is very difficult for the prison staff and probation staff to adequately educate and train, and to have time for those quiet conversations on the wings between prison officers and prisoners, which are sometimes very important turning points in someone’s life. I have worked alongside many colleagues who have left prison, and very often the story they tell me is that their lives were not turned around by family or friends but by a kind prison officer who gave them their time.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, spoke about mental health. We have a broad failure across many of our public services, including the health service. One of the things that is very important to me as I progress in this role is to support our health professionals to work with our offenders, inside and outside prison. These people have failed society but often society has failed them too, and they often need support to overcome their health problems, especially around addiction.
The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, talked about the impact on communities when people leave prison and how society will cope with that. We are recruiting 1,000 extra probation officers; although they will not be in place completely until March next year, it is an important step. What we want to achieve is a reduction in reoffending. To me, what is important from this job is to help people not to reoffend, because that reduces crime, we have fewer victims, it costs less money and it means fewer wasted lives. The plan at the moment is for the release point to go to 40%, and when we are satisfied that the capacity problem is resolved, it will go back to 50%, We will publish every quarter an update on how this scheme is running. Not all prisoners leaving prison will go on tag; it will depend on whether the professionals deem it to be appropriate. As I said on Wednesday, I will test one of the tags myself to see what it is like, and will report back to noble Lords.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, the Minister should make sure that it is not a sobriety tag.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I assume that if it is, I will not be able to have a sherry trifle, which is one of my favourite desserts.
To conclude, this statutory instrument is vital for addressing the capacity crisis in our prisons. It will pull us back from the brink of a total collapse of law and order in our country, which would put the British people at risk—something we cannot countenance. We should, however, be under no illusion: the measure we have debated today is not a silver bullet for prison capacity. It will not end this crisis and it is not the solution for the longer term, but it is a measure that buys us the time needed to take further steps to address the pressures in our prisons and put the criminal justice system on a sustainable footing, in turn providing greater protection to victims and the public. It rightly brings to an end the short-term measures of the previous Government that operated without due transparency, proper scrutiny or the safeguards to protect the public that are the heart of this Government’s approach.
Before I close, I wish to extend some further thanks, building on the remarks I made in my maiden speech in this place. As I said then, those who work in our Prison and Probation Service work every day with some of the most complex people, inside one of the most complex systems. Managing a prison system at around 99% capacity for an extended time will have been an extraordinary challenge not just for those on the front line but for all the partners in our criminal justice system, including civil servants at the Ministry of Justice and those working in the third sector. I therefore thank my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service not just for the way they have welcomed me into the department but for their committed and largely unsung service to guiding us through this current prison capacity challenge.
The last Government placed our criminal justice system and prisons in crisis, but the legacy of this Government will be different. It will see a prison system brought under control, a Probation Service that keeps the public safe and enough prison places to meet our needs—which will lead to having prisons we are proud of, but also prisons, probation and other services working together to break the cycle of the revolving door and reduce reoffending. Today’s measure is not the long-term solution—we are being transparent about this—but it is the necessary first step.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Will the Minister respond, perhaps at a later date, to my questions about drugs policy and the fact that this Government did not release a report?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness. I will write to her, because I am not completely familiar with that and I would not like to get it wrong.