Sentencing Bill

Debate between Baroness Chakrabarti and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry. It is nearly Christmas, and it is late.

There are policies that sit on shelves in Westminster and Whitehall for many years, and over the years and the decades people reach for the shelf and pull them off. It is very easy to blame civil servants, but the special adviser class—a cross-party class—have their files on the shelves too, and this naming and shaming thing has been doing the rounds for decades. Our lovely friends the special advisers are not here in the Chamber at this time; they are at the Spectator party or the New Statesman party or whatever it happens to be this evening, but naming and shaming of offenders is a really bad idea.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. The one point of difference is that, if one were to be charitable, one would say it is really important that the public have faith and confidence in community orders. I agree with that, so I would support a slight alternative to this approach, so that we are not naming and shaming particular offenders but taking other steps to make very clear in the community that this was built, cleaned or done by offenders serving sentences in the community. That would achieve the best ambitions of this policy without the cruelty and humiliation that the noble Baroness rightly identifies. That is what I ask my noble friends the Ministers to take back to the department and reflect upon. I think that would be something the Government could think about before Report.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I oppose this clause standing part of the Bill. It seems to me that everything that has been said by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Chakrabarti, is right. I also agree with the suggestion by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that there is nothing at all wrong with saying that work of a particular kind was done by offenders as part of their community order. What I object to is, as she says, the naming and shaming.

But it goes further than that—it is, by definition, naming and shaming of offenders under supervision, because it is only offenders who are undertaking an unpaid work requirement who will be subject to this clause. I suggest that the compulsory photographing of such offenders—by probation officers, if you please—and the publication of those photographs and the offenders’ names, would be profoundly damaging. I, like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, regard this clause as likely to damage relationships between probation officers and their clients, undermine offenders within their communities and make it more difficult for those offenders to integrate within those communities. The clause is overwhelmingly unlikely to do anything to rehabilitate offenders or reduce reoffending. It is, in short, largely vindictive only. Since one can expect the publication of names and photographs mostly to be by local media outlets, such publication is likely to fuel hostility to offenders whom we are trying to rehabilitate among their community and likely to encourage what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester earlier today called “penal populism”, with what, I suggest, could be only damaging effects.

We completely accept the position put by the noble Lord that community sentences are punishment and are intended to be punishment. They are punitive in the sense of restricting an offender’s liberty and imposing requirements that may be onerous on offenders, but they are also primarily directed at enabling rehabilitation and reducing reoffending. For such sentences to work, friendly and constructive relationships between probation officers and offenders, their clients, under their supervision and efforts to enable those offenders to be settled in their communities are vital. These proposals are, frankly, inimical to those ends. I have come across no evidence whatever that this kind of naming and shaming will do any good or reduce reoffending in any way. I believe it can only do harm. For that reason, I oppose this clause, and I invite the Government to abandon it.