Prisoner Release Checks

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Timpson

Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I note that the Statement directly addresses strengthening prison release checks, but I put to the Minister that it is important to look at this in the broader context of the Home Office. I note that on Radio 4 this morning there was a list of schemes and programmes within the Home Office that are going wrong. The police national computer system replacement is six years late; the biometrics project is seven years late; and the emergency services communication system is a decade late and £3 billion over budget. Now, since the Conservative Front Bench did not, I will fully acknowledge that this is a situation that the current Government inherited; they cannot be held responsible for what arrived on their desk, but I read in this Statement about the extra checks, the new systems and governors that have been put into prisons to try to stop these releases going wrong.

We know that the reasons there have been problems with so many computer systems within the Home Office is that the rules have kept being changed and the problems with the quality of the data going into these systems have not been properly acknowledged. Can the Minister assure me that the Government are taking full account of the weakness of the Home Office and its systems overall, and the level of chaos that they inherited? Is it not time to think about a big restructure—a potential splitting up of a Home Office that is very clearly not working?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

Decisions such as on the noble Baroness’s last point are far above my pay grade, but I shall just mention two points. First, on release in error, any release in error is far too many and there is clearly a problem here that needs to be addressed. My style is very much, “Let’s deal with it and let’s work out what the problems are”, and I think that the investigation that Dame Lynne Owens will do will be very helpful as part of that process.

On the question of data, and making sure that we are effective and accurate in the work that we do, I spend a lot of time focusing on how we can embrace technology to ensure that, specifically, the Prison and Probation Service—which I know is within Justice, not the Home Office—has the ability to get things done more accurately and enables front-line staff to focus on what they do best, which is to rehabilitate people, not to fill out forms. Justice Transcribe—which uses AI to dictate what happened in a meeting with an offender, rather than the probation officer having to spend an hour writing it down afterwards—may sound like a very straightforward addition but is making a big difference already, saving hours of probation officers’ time. As someone who has come here from the commercial world, I am convinced that the more we embrace technology to enable our front-line staff to deliver excellent public services, the better.

Prison Capacity Strategy

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Timpson

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his detailed question. In the wider scheme of things, the best way to get value for money, as he says, is to reduce reoffending. Maybe in 15 or 20 years we will not need the prison places we have now because our reoffending will be much lower and the success of what I am trying to do in this job will be bringing results. One of the main areas of being sensible with money is not to lose cells, so we are making sure that our existing stock is maintained.

Noble Lords may remember that I mentioned HMP Preston. It first welcomed prisoners in 1798 and is still going strong. It has some elements that need a bit of work, but we also need to maintain them. The cost of building new cells in new prisons is £500,000 each. The cost of running them will be significant, because it is not just running buildings but staffing them and all the associated healthcare costs that go with it. Unfortunately, we do not have a choice to spend £10.1 billion at the moment—it was going to be a lot less than that—because we are in a position where we need to have spare capacity for the courts to do their job.

I am also looking forward to David Gauke’s review of sentencing to see the conclusions it comes to and the evidence it has looked at. A number of noble Lords will be feeding information into the sentencing review, which is due before 9 January. Running prisons is an expensive business. Reoffending, at £18 billion a year, is an incredible amount of money and waste. My job here, as a commercially minded person, is to look at why we are spending this money, and to challenge when we are spending what look like eye-watering amounts. I am challenging it, and I like to think I am starting to get some results.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin with an expression of sympathy to the Minister. What we have heard in your Lordships’ House—the focus on rehabilitation and reducing reoffending—is very welcome. However, we are discussing the Statement from the other place and asking questions about that. The focus of that Statement is on having capacity to meet demand. It talks about bringing in an annual statement to

“set out prison population projections”

and

“the Department’s plan for supply”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/12/24; col. 1090.]

This sounds rather like Defra promising us a plan for the increases in rainfall that climate change predictions suggest will happen. It is as though it is something being done to the Government rather than a result of the choices of the criminal justice policy the Government have in their own hands. This is very much a passive approach. The Minister might say that this promises an Independent Sentencing Review, but that is handing over the responsibility to a group of independent people.

As the noble Lord, Lord Maude of Horsham, pointed out, we have the highest per capita prison population in western Europe by a long way. I am not sure whether this should be a milestone or a mission; maybe we could just call it a target. Surely the Government should be saying, “We are going to aim, by the end of this term, to have a reduction”. We are currently at 159 people in prison per 100,000. Perhaps we could aim to match the next big country, France, which has 104 people per 100,000—that is a reduction of a third. Finland has 51 per 100,000, which is a long way away indeed. Perhaps we could aim for an average. Should the Government not have a target, milestone or mission to reduce the prison population by the end of their period in office?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. I would love it if we could lock up fewer people, but we cannot: we need prison spaces to ensure that we punish people who have done very bad things. We also need to make sure we rehabilitate them. We need the capacity to cater for things such as the civil unrest we had in the summer. We are way off levels of prison population like those of the countries the noble Baroness mentioned.

This is going to take an awful long time to turn around, but the steps we are taking are very important. We need capacity, we need to have the sentencing review, we need to focus on reducing reoffending, and we need all the associated tools to do that. We know what needs to be done and what the evidence is. I see my job as delivering on that.

I also know that this is not a quick fix. If we go for a quick-fix solution, we will be in trouble. This needs to be very thoughtful and take time. The people we are dealing with in prisons and on probation are often very complex people. I want to make sure that what we do works.