Draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Suitability for Fixed Term Recall) Order 2025
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 11 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Sir Nicholas Dakin)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Suitability for Fixed Term Recall) Order 2025.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McVey. The Government inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse. The last Government added just 500 net places to our prison estate, while at the same time sentence lengths rose. As a result, the prison population is now rising by 3,000 each year and outstripping supply. When we took office, we were left with no option but to introduce a temporary change to the law that allows prisoners serving an eligible standard determinate sentence to be released on licence after serving 40%, rather than 50%, of their sentence in custody. That enabled the end of the dysfunctional and unmanageable end-of-custody supervised licence scheme, but we knew that it was just a first step.
Since taking office, this Government have delivered almost 2,500 prison places, and in the most recent spending review, we committed a further £4.7 billion to open 14,000 more by 2031. That will be the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era. That longer-term investment is necessary but not sufficient in itself to avoid the capacity issues that have faced the criminal justice system for so many years. In May, the Lord Chancellor announced that the adult male prison estate in England and Wales was projected to run out of places in November of this year, and that, alongside our long-term building strategy in sentencing reform, urgent measures to change the use of recall would be needed to ensure that we do not run out of cells, and so avoid a breakdown of law and order.
Last October, we commissioned the independent sentencing review, led by the former Lord Chancellor David Gauke, to find sustainable policy solutions and ensure that no future Government are ever again in a position where there are more prisoners than prison places, and are forced to rely on emergency relief. That is not an acceptable position for any Government to find themselves in. The review suggests that recalls should be rare and that, as a last resort, we should replace standard and short-term recalls for those on standard determinate sentences with a 56-day fixed-term recall. The Government have in principle accepted that recommendation, which requires primary legislation to be implemented. A Bill will soon be introduced to implement many of the review’s recommendations.
While the sentencing review offers us our path to ending the capacity crisis in our prisons for good, it will take time to take effect. The impact of the sentencing reforms will not be felt before next spring, so we remain in a critical position until then. This Government are not prepared to stand by while we run out prison places. That is what the Conservatives did, and we will not make the same mistake. That is why we are taking targeted action on recall, which remains a significant driver of prison demand. The recall population has more than doubled since 2018, from 6,000 to 13,000 prisoners in March of this year, without a corresponding growth in offender rates. With more people in prison and supervised in the community serving longer sentences, recall rates are naturally higher.
When recalled, offenders serving standard determinate sentences can currently receive either a standard or a fixed-term recall. The length of fixed-term recall is set out in primary legislation, and it is set at 28 days if the sentence is 12 months or more, or 14 days if the sentence is under 12 months. It remains the case that the Probation Service will undertake an individualised risk assessment before any offender is released under this measure, regardless of the offence they commit, which includes the risk of physical, emotional, psychological or sexual harm, to inform their risk management plan and licence conditions.
Offenders face recall to prison if they breach licence conditions, such as tagging, curfew, protective orders or exclusion zones or if their risk escalates. Those not suitable for a fixed-term recall may currently receive a standard recall, under which they remain in custody until the end of their sentence, unless re-released earlier by the Secretary of State or Parole Board. Our latest data shows at least 48% of all recalls are fixed-term rather than standard.
The draft order will mandate the use of fixed-term recall in specified circumstances. It will apply to adult offenders serving standard determinate sentences of less than 48 months. I want to be clear: we are excluding from this policy offenders who pose a higher risk to others. That means the measure will not apply to offenders who are convicted of terrorist or national security offences, pose a terrorist risk, are managed under the multi-agency public protection arrangements levels 2 or 3—which includes certain violent and sexual offenders—are recalled in connection with being charged with an offence, or are under 18 at the point of recall. Those offenders can continue to receive a standard-term recall, with release subject to Parole Board or Secretary of State decision.
In all other applicable cases, a fixed-term recall must now be imposed. That would mean the provision of around an additional 1,400 prison spaces, thereby allowing us to avoid a critical capacity crisis in November, and the serious risk to the public that that would bring, until the new measures from the independent sentencing review come into force.
I know that concerns have been raised by Members of this House and important bodies such as the Victims’ and Domestic Abuse Commissioners about the potential impact of this measure on victims—particularly survivors of domestic abuse—and public safety. I assure the House that those serious concerns have been at the forefront of our considerations. The worst possible outcome for victims of crime is if we run out of prison spaces, as predicted for November. That would mean new dangerous offenders would not be able to be locked up, as the police would have to halt their arrest. This policy is designed to prevent that happening. The exclusions we have established are purposefully designed to capture those assessed as posing a higher risk, thereby ensuring that those individuals can remain subject to standard recall procedures.
Let me be clear: victims are central to the Government’s work. We are determined to support victims now and reduce reoffending so there are fewer victims in future. Current or potential risk to victims is always considered as part of release planning. Probation will impose appropriate licence conditions, such as tagging, curfews and exclusion zones. Any offender who breaches those conditions, or whose risk is considered elevated, can once again be recalled to custody. Victims who have opted into the victim contact scheme will still be notified and retain their statutory right to make representations in relation to the licence conditions imposed. For those not eligible for that scheme, established public protection practices remain, and police may still issue disclosures where there is imminent risk. Measures in the Victims and Courts Bill will enhance victims’ access to information about an offender’s release, strengthening confidence in the system.
If further information is received following a recall that the offender has been charged with an offence, or they are a terrorist, pose a terrorist risk or would be managed at MAPPA levels 2 or 3 on release, they may be detained for longer on a standard recall at the discretion of the public protection team at His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. Their re-release would then be determined by the Parole Board or the Secretary of State.
I assure the House that we do not take this decision lightly and we have made every effort to ensure that it is appropriately targeted, proportionate and mitigated. The extent of the draft instrument and its territorial application is for England and Wales. An impact assessment has been prepared and published for the draft instrument. It concludes that there will be an increase in demand for various services, including probation, community accommodation and electronic monitoring services. We have been working closely with partners nationally and regionally to ensure the impacts of the measure on services are well understood and manageable, and to ensure that they are sufficiently resourced to respond to the immediate and longer term. However, it also concludes that by taking action we avoid the catastrophic consequences of doing nothing. We avoid a situation where trials would halt, arrests would be deferred and police forces strained.
I recognise that there are concerns about how an increase in the number of offenders being managed in the community will impact probation services. The Government inherited a Probation Service on its knees, and from day one, we have been hard at work getting a grip on the crisis.
It is vital that the Probation Service is properly equipped and resourced to deliver this change effectively. We are already making progress to rebuild the capacity of the Probation Service. We are committed to recruiting 1,300 trainee probation officers in 2025-26 to help meet additional demand, having exceeded our ambition to recruit 1,000 trainees in 2024-25. We are also reducing the administrative burden on probation officers by investing an initial £8 million in pilots of new technology. That will allow probation officers to focus more of their time on higher-risk offenders, for whom closer supervision is needed to reduce the risk they pose.
The Government have committed up to £700 million of additional funding to probation services by the final year of the spending review period, which is a funding increase of around 45%. That will mean thousands more tags, more staff and more accommodation to ensure that offenders are supervised and supported more closely in the community. Probation capacity will continue to be closely monitored as the new measures are introduced across the service. The Ministry of Justice carefully considers any policy changes with operational colleagues and workforce modelling teams. A transformation programme is also under way that aims to ease workload demands and to streamline processes for probation staff.
The draft order is necessary to avoid an imminent capacity crisis. It will free up enough prison places in as safe as possible a way to ensure the criminal justice system can continue to operate effectively until the implementation of longer-term reforms.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. The draft order will amend the criteria for determining whether an offender recalled to custody should be eligible for automatic release after a fixed term. It has been framed as a pragmatic response to prison overcrowding, but in truth, it is a short-sighted and potentially dangerous change that prioritises expediency over safety and reactivity over long-term strategy. Let me be absolutely clear that this is not a procedural tweak but a significant recalibration of how we manage and record offenders.
The draft order would mandate fixed-term recall—automatic release after 28 days—for the majority of offenders serving under four years, so long as they are not managed under MAPPA level 2 or 3, they have not been charged with a new offence or they are not linked to terrorism or national security. We cannot possibly support that step. There are 67,000 registered sex offenders in the UK, and 95% of them are managed at MAPPA level 1. More than 63,000 registered sex offenders would now automatically be released from prison outside of very limited circumstances.
Such a sweeping change to recall policy, which would affect a large and potentially serious cohort of offenders, raises concerns about public protection and undermines the careful balance that recall decisions are meant to strike. In 2023-24, 45% of recalled offenders were deemed too unsafe for release by the Parole Board, yet under these new rules, many of them could now re-enter society without proper assessment; it is absolutely imperative that the Minister explains how many of those offenders would have been let out if these rules were in play at that time. The chief inspector of probation, Martin Jones, has warned that the policy risks creating a bounce-back effect whereby prolific offenders are released for up to 28 days, then recalled again repeatedly without the root cause of their behaviour being addressed.
These are not edge cases. The policy will apply to criminals serving sentences of up to four years, including those convicted of serious sexual and violent offences who, under the current arrangements, might have remained in custody pending robust risk assessment. Victim safety, public protection and community confidence demand far more than blanket rules, and the draft order exposes us to unacceptable risk. It makes a fundamental change that will create capacity at the expense of victims and public safety.
Let us dwell for a moment on the human consequences: by mandating automatic release after 28 days, the draft order strips away an important layer of risk management. We know that many offenders breach licence conditions not just on a mere technicality but with behaviours that signal a resurgence of their threat. That threat is particularly clear in cases involving domestic abuse. Domestic abuse charities and campaigners have raised deep concerns about fixed-term recalls being applied in this way, and last month Victims’ Commissioner Baroness Newlove stated:
“Victims will understandably feel unnerved and bewildered by today’s announcement. The cumulative effect has been to corrode confidence in the justice system and undermine victims’ sense of security.”
Ellie Butt, head of policy and public affairs at Refuge, warned:
“Refuge has consistently raised concerns about the serious safety risks posed to survivors of domestic abuse as a result of prison early release schemes…if a perpetrator were to breach”
licence conditions
“and be recalled to prison, they could be free to offend again in less than a month.”
The Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Dame Nicole Jacobs, stated:
“I cannot stress the lack of consideration for victims’ safety and how many lives are being put in danger because of this proposed change…Re-releasing them back into the community after 28 days is simply unacceptable.”
The Government will tell us they have no choice. Short-term thinking is jeopardising public safety. A couple of weeks ago, reports emerged that the Government have decided not to proceed with constructing new cells in an existing prison. Specifically, the Ministry of Justice has rejected long-standing plans to build a 240-place house block at HM Prison Gartree. They claim to be doing all they can to prevent early prisoner release, but how does that decision align with their attempts to increase capacity?
The Government will claim that there are not alternative solutions, but there are, such as tackling the remand population. As of March 2025, the number of people held on remand in England and Wales stood at 17,582, which is a full 20% of the total prison population, and still several thousand above the historical average. Those are people who are not yet convicted of any crime, and many may not ever be. Still, however, the Government failed to act on the Lady Chief Justice’s offer of additional court sitting days. Even now, sitting days remain available, but they have decided not to fund them. Every month they delay means more courtrooms left empty, more victims and defendants left waiting, and more pressure piled on to the system.
What about probation? The impact assessment for the draft order concedes that it would “increase the workload” on the Probation Service. That is an under-statement. In reality, the order would transfer pressure from the prison estate to the community, demanding that probation officers, already overstretched, manage a sudden influx of higher risk, less thoroughly assessed offenders. There has been a decrease in the absolute number of probation officers in the year up to March 2025, at a time when the Government are pledging to expand probationary services. The impact assessment says that will
“increase demand for probation services as offenders will spend more time on average on licence being supervised”
in the community. When do the Government expect to increase the total number of probation officers in a sustained way? How much of the additional funding in the spending review was allocated to this policy?
There are further impacts on the police, as the impact assessment makes clear. Chief Constable Gavin Stephens responded to the spending review on behalf of the police chiefs, commenting,
“it is clear that this is an incredibly challenging outcome for policing. In real terms, today’s increase in funding will cover little more than annual inflationary pay increases”.
Police forces are already shouldering a substantial share of risk. As I said, approximately 95% of registered sexual offenders in England and Wales are on MAPPA level 1, and are usually managed locally by the police and Probation Service. We are adding an additional task to their workload.
The statutory instrument fails on multiple fronts. It ignores victims, it burdens probation and it makes the public less safe. It does not address the underlying causes, and instead we have a blunt tool, wielded in haste, in the hope that no one notices the deeper difficulties it conceals. For those reasons, we will oppose the order today.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
It is great to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. Liberal Democrats recognise the acute pressure on our prison system. We recognise, see and feel, as do many victims and survivors across our country, that the last Government allowed our prisons to reach breaking point. Victims and survivors are paying the price for the way in which our criminal justice system has been crashed, but the draft order is a blunt, reactive tool that could undermine justice, due process and public safety, all for the sake of short-term expediency. By imposing an almost one-size-fits-all 28-day fixed-term recall for most individuals serving determinate sentences under four years, the policy strips away vital safeguards. The Parole Board’s ability to assess individual cases is effectively bypassed and replaced by administrative convenience. That is not justice; that is bureaucracy displacing public safety. Victims, survivors and our communities at large deserve case-by-case recall processes.
The order also fails to provide adequate protection for victims, particularly survivors of domestic abuse, which the Minister knows is completely intolerable to me. Despite exemptions for some of the most serious offenders, at MAPPA levels 2 and 3, too many high-risk individuals could slip through the cracks, as has been the case under the SDS40 early release scheme, which I have highlighted time and again in the main Chamber. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the Lords has rightly raised the alarm that victims could be placed in serious danger, raising concerns that the re-release of some violent or sexual offenders who might slip through the net puts
“their victims at high risks of serious harm or death”.
When the Government have a very noble mission to create safer streets, surely that cannot be permitted.
We believe in a criminal justice system that rehabilitates, not one that bounces from crisis to crisis. Rehabilitation should aim to reduce reoffending, not to accelerate the release of individuals who have contravened licence conditions without due assessment. It is not just Liberal Democrats who are saying that. For example, Women’s Aid has spoken powerfully about the need to reassess the provision, as has Refuge, with which we have been working closely.
We support community-based alternatives to custody, such as investment in mental health and addiction services and a properly funded Probation Service, but not the dangerous shortcut that this draft order represents. The answer to overcrowding cannot be to cut corners on risk assessments or public protection. We cannot sacrifice justice at the altar of expediency, which is why the Liberal Democrats will oppose the draft order.
Sir Nicholas Dakin
I thank both speakers for their contributions to the debate. First, let me pick up on the points made by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Eastbourne, who was right to say that the criminal justice system crashed under the previous Government’s watch. That was our inheritance.
The hon. Member was also right to raise his concerns about the response being appropriate and safe. I can assure him that, given the alternatives we face, this will be a safe and appropriate way of proceeding. It is worth reminding ourselves that the recall population was 6,000 in 2018 and is now 13,600; it has grown exponentially. There is a need to create space in prisons in a safe and secure way so that we can lock up the dangerous people who need to be locked up. That is why we are taking this measure now, and it will be carefully and appropriately managed.
Where there are any issues of risk from individuals, they can be recalled at that point, and it is for the Probation Service to identify that. There are proper and sound bases in place to tackle the issue, but I thank the hon. Member for his constructive approach to this issue and for recognising that it is a challenge. It is a challenge that this Government are determined to meet in a safe and proper way that ensures that we can continue to lock dangerous people up.
That brings me to the speech made by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle. As always, it was interesting and challenging, but it suggests that there is no recognition of his party’s contribution to the difficulties we find ourselves in. In essence, we have to take the hard decisions that the previous Government failed to take. If we take prisons as an example, 500 prison places were added in 14 years, compared with the 24,000 places added in the 13 years of the previous Labour Government. Already, more than 2,000 have been added in the first year of this Government.
We do not take lectures from the party opposite lightly; however, the hon. Member’s challenge is perfectly reasonable and proper. In the May of their last year in government, the previous Government brought in their parallel measure for the fixed-term recall for sentences of up to 12 months to create space in prisons. That is what we are being forced to do now, in a managed, proper and safe way.
Dr Mullan
I have one question for the Minister about the most important impact of the policy, and about the people who the Parole Board would otherwise say cannot be released in order to go home. What proportion of them will potentially be affected by this policy and will be let out?
Sir Nicholas Dakin
I do not think that information is—[Interruption.] The reality is that the Parole Board has so much to do that people have to wait a long time to get their parole hearing. That is one of the reasons why the prison system is essentially running out of spaces, and we inherited that from the hon. Member’s Government. We are having to roll up our sleeves and deal with the problem, whereas his Government just abrogated their responsibility. If they had taken the necessary actions, we would not be in the situation that we are now in. Frankly, it would be far better if we did not have to take these actions, but we do, in order to keep public protection in place, to keep people safe, and to be able to lock dangerous people up.
Question put.