Sentencing Bill
Baroness Hamwee ExcerptsMonday 1st December 2025
(4 days, 11 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Sentencing Bill 2024-26 View all Sentencing Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 142-II(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (1 Dec 2025)
Baroness Hamwee
“Rehabilitative programmes for offences relating to violence against women and girls (1) The Secretary of State must undertake an assessment of the potential benefits of creating mandatory rehabilitative programmes regarding healthy relationships for individuals sentenced for offences when the victim is a woman or girl.(2) The Secretary of State must, within a year of the day on which this Act is passed, lay a copy of the assessment under this section before Parliament.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to carry out an assessment of the potential benefits of creating mandatory rehabilitative programmes about healthy relationships for those sentenced to offences where the victim is a woman or girl.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 52 would provide for the Secretary of State to make an assessment of the benefits of mandatory rehabilitative programmes regarding healthy relationships for individuals sentenced for offences when the victim is a woman or girl and to lay a copy of that assessment before Parliament. I declare an interest as a trustee of Safer London, a charity which works with young Londoners affected by, or at risk of, violence and exploitation. Among these are young Londoners who display harmful sexual behaviours. Often, they may not have a full understanding of their actions, where their behaviours may stem from or that they themselves need support.
I am under no illusion that an intervention is likely to be quick or easy. These are young or not so young people who have had no role model or a bad role model, who may be neurodiverse, who may be resistant to relevant specialist treatment and support. They may not understand what a healthy relationship is like. They may believe that what is harmful is what a girl or woman wants. The picture over recent years has become further confused by what they see online or on social media. I am under no illusion that this is easy, but it is important. A Bill seeking to reduce reoffending is just the place where this kind of action should be taken. I am not asking for such programmes immediately, though it is good if there are some that can be accessed. However, I would like to see put into the public domain an assessment of the benefits of programmes such as this.
The other amendments in this group are in the name of the Conservative Front Bench. They seem to focus largely on the number of rehabilitation activity days. The number of days is a factor, but it is neither the first factor nor the only one; the content of rehabilitative activity and the reasons for that are more important. In other words, the approach should be more reasoned and nuanced than these amendments might suggest.
I beg to move.
Lord Sandhurst (Con)
My Lords, these amendments, many of which are in my name—Amendments 53, 54 and so on—address the Government’s proposal to transfer a significant element of sentencing discretion from the courts to probation practitioners: determining the number of rehabilitation activity days under community orders and suspended sentence orders. The amendments seek not to frustrate reform, although, as we made clear on our first day in Committee, we oppose the changes. They are intended to ensure that, if such powers are to be reallocated to the probation officer or practitioner from the judges, they are supported and buttressed by the same principled framework of accountability, transparency and procedural safeguards that have underpinned judicial discretion through the years.
The constitutional architecture of this country has long rested on the independence and authority of our judiciary. Sentencing is a judicial function and the product of reasoned evaluation of seriousness, culpability, risk and proportionality. Judges exercise that responsibility transparently, in open court and subject to appellate review. These protections exist because sentencing is a public act in which legitimacy rests on visible fairness. Society, represented by the third limb of the constitution—the judiciary—is passing sentence on outlaws and criminal offenders.
Clauses 11 and 12 would shift this discretion from judges to probation practitioners. Probation professionals are dedicated and skilled, of course, but they were never intended to assume quasi-judicial responsibilities. The Government may describe this as flexibility, but flexibility cannot become a veil for judicial discretion exercised behind closed doors without consistency or oversight. If probation offices are to take on direct decision-making powers that influence the substance of a sentence, proper safeguards must apply; the Bill, we submit, contains none.
Amendment 53 would therefore require the Secretary of State to establish, by regulation, clear national criteria governing how rehabilitation activity days are to be determined. Decisions of such consequence must not depend on local practice, staffing pressures or administrative expediency; in these straitened financial times, I emphasise “staffing pressures or administrative expediency”. Judges operate within well-established frameworks. Probation practitioners should not be left to improvise.
Amendment 54 would require written reasons for the determination of rehabilitation days. Giving reasons is a cornerstone of fairness. Offenders must personally understand what is required of them. Victims must be able to trust the process, and the courts must be able to review what is being done in their name.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
As noble Lords know, I have devoted much of my life and career to criminal justice reform, in particular, how to reduce reoffending. Because of this, I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Amendments 52 to 58.
On Amendment 52 on violence against women and girls, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, this is a serious and complex challenge that demands co-ordinated action. HMPPS works closely with partners to manage risk, protect victims and reduce harm through evidence-based interventions. For more than three decades, HMPPS has led in developing programmes that address attitudes and behaviours linked to offending, alongside specialist psychological support and community tools. Guided by the principles of effective practice, these services target those at medium or high risk, ensuring that resources are focused where they make the greatest impact. We are always considering research findings that we can learn from which show us what reduces reoffending both here and abroad. There is evidence that has shown that the effects of accredited programme participation for low-risk individuals are usually found to be negligible or in some cases negative. Therefore, accredited programmes are not routinely recommended for low-risk offenders.
On Amendments 53 to 58, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, I reassure the Committee that, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, reiterated, Clauses 11 and 12 do not remove the court’s sentencing powers. The decision to apply the requirement to an order sits firmly with the court and that will remain the case. For example, as is the case now, where a judge considers it necessary to impose a community or suspended sentence order, it is they who will determine whether to add a probation requirement. The probation requirement will be part of the menu of requirements available to judges to decide to apply to an order. In addition, where a pre-sentence report is requested by the court, the judge will be provided with an indication of an offender’s risk and need, and what intervention they may receive following a more thorough assessment by probation after sentencing.
The removal of court-set RAR days is needed. The evidence shows that RAR is not working effectively. Practitioners are restricted by the current approach, and we know that RAR days sentenced are not always aligned with an offender’s rehabilitative needs. The evidence from our published process evaluation is clear that probation staff and magistrates felt that the RAR was, in some cases, sentenced as a catch-all. I have been told by probation practitioners across the country, from Manchester to the Isle of Wight, that the way the RAR is applied currently, with sometimes an arbitrary number of RAR days being sentenced, restricts their ability to effectively rehabilitate offenders.
We are moving to a model that enables probation practitioners to use their professional expertise to ensure that rehabilitation is tailored to what works. This was a direct recommendation in David Gauke’s sentencing review report. The removal of court-specified maximum days will ensure that probation resources are directed to where they will have the most impact. Decisions will always be led by a thorough assessment of risk and need after sentencing. This does not change the fact that offenders are required to comply with the instructions of their probation officer. If they do not comply, they could face a return to court and receive tougher penalties.
I agree that it is important that we are clear on how the probation requirements will be applied. That is why clear guidance will be in place to support practitioners in their assessment, and on how to deliver the change. We should trust our valued practitioners to make informed decisions about rehabilitation activity in the same way they do with supervision. It is important that they have the flexibility to do so without placing an extra burden on them to justify each decision to the court. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, mentioned probation plans. On the first day of Committee last week, I mentioned that I am happy to present the plans for probation to noble Lords. I have already had one noble Lord take me up on the offer, and others are welcome.
Data is published annually on the completion of some community requirements, and it would not be proportionate to legislate at this time to publish further specific data on the probation requirement, as proposed by the noble Lords. We keep under regular review what data is collected and published, especially in the era of AI. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that quality up-to-date information is important to inform management and policy. The way I have run my businesses in the past, and the way I am trying to do my job as a Minister in the Ministry of Justice, is by using data to hold people to account, because we need to keep improving performance so that we can improve public confidence in the justice system.
In light of this information and the reassurances I have provided on the intention of these clauses, I urge the noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
I for one would really welcome a discussion with the noble Lord; I did not realise that we should use this occasion to accept the invitation. Perhaps at the same time, I should use an opportunity to talk to him more about what the organisation with which I am connected has succeeded in doing on healthy relationships.
Perhaps “mandatory” was misplaced in my amendment. It is more than education and more than having people sitting in a classroom being told. Nothing is a complete answer in this area—I think we are all aware of that—but I am talking about one-to-one connection and contact, which has to be built up over a long period before it can be effective. Therefore, it is really something more detailed and full than I dare say I was giving the impression of. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, for supporting the amendment, but I beg leave to withdraw it.
Baroness Hamwee
“Availability of probation requirements and treatment requirementsThe Lord Chancellor shall lay a report before Parliament annually regarding—(a) the funding of activities and treatments for probation requirements, and(b) the availability of activities and treatments in each region of England and in Wales.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Lord Chancellor to make an annual report to Parliament on the availability of activities and treatments for probation requirements.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, rehabilitative activities, activities designed to reduce reoffending—whatever we call them; I do not disagree with my noble friend that what we call them is important—and treatments are often provided by the third sector. A lot of what is provided is excellent, but it is not enough, and it is not consistent across the country. The third sector’s role was acknowledged by David Gauke in his review.
We hear success stories, for instance of a middle-aged woman whose alcoholism was treated after she had been convicted several times for relatively low-level offences. She ceased offending when the alcoholism was treated and was able to lead an ordered life. I think too of a young man who, time after time, failed to connect with his probation officers. Then he found one—or she found him—whom he trusted. That enabled him to take proper advantage of the support that was available. Those are two examples of people the Justice and Home Affairs Committee met before my noble friend joined it.
I know the Minister knows all this, and he knows much more than I do, but I tabled this amendment because regional disparities are substantial and funding needs are acute. A friend of mine refers to some of these organisations as having something that is almost similar to an eating disorder—they simply do not have enough. That is not a very good way of putting it, but they are so hampered by lack of funding. It must be very difficult to work for one of these organisations, knowing that you can never do enough. I do not advocate that all services should be provided by the state, but it is a very sorry position that we are so reliant on voluntary charitable organisations, which are struggling to keep going—not always successfully.
As to Amendment 139B, my noble friend Lord Marks will say more about reporting on reoffending, giving comparative details between offenders who have completed community and custodial sentences. I would be surprised if that is not available to the MoJ now. Because one wants to see sentences that work and maintain the trust of the public in the operation of the justice system—we are becoming like a stuck record in mentioning the public’s trust—the more information in the public domain, the better.
I think Amendment 93A from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is in a similar vein, though I do not come to the same conclusion about an automatic sunset of the Act. I beg to move.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name in this group. The Committee will be delighted to know that I do not intend to go into detail on Amendment 86 as I think it is quite straightforward and others may wish to discuss it, including my noble friends on the Front Bench, but I do intend to elucidate on my Amendments 93A and 127.
The point of this group is transparency in the criminal justice system. The second of my amendments, Amendment 93A, is about the efficacy of reforms to community services. I tabled the amendment, which, incidentally—it goes without saying—is a probing amendment, because it is important to test, over a period of time, the efficacy of the quite substantial and radical policy changes that these clauses give rise to. It is a probing amendment that challenges the Government to account for the success or otherwise of these proposals.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, referred to me as his erstwhile sparring partner; I am going to have to up my game.
Amendment 58A was intended as a mechanism to introduce the issues. I am sure that the Minister will understand that one has to find devices in order to introduce subjects, and one of those most often used is laying a report. I take his point about an annual report, but this measure was intended—to use his words—to be tailored to what works. I was particularly keen to stress the reliance on the third sector and the need for its services to be available; this is particularly relevant to women offenders, but not only them.
I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. This is an issue that is hard to leave alone. I noticed that, when the Minister was talking about the available treatments, he understandably referred to the Department of Health and Social Care. It is not only that, though. Let me take this moment—I am aware that we are spending a very long time on this group—to refer to the purposeful amendment, in every sense, of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I support it, but only so far; I hope that supporting it “so far” might give us something on which we can work after this stage in order to inject an element of reality.
In the report of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lord Foster—it is titled Better Prisons: Less Crime—I found it quite shocking to read of the difficulties and the failures to provide education and skills training, particularly when one thinks of the functional innumeracy and illiteracy mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Porter. Having to impose a mandatory requirement would be a great pity and would set up too many prisons and prison governors to fail.
This issue remains important, and it is very good that we have had this opportunity to discuss it. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I have been struggling to find the amendments that I was speaking to, to which the noble Lord referred when he talked about my opposition. I remember querying terms such as “associated offences” and offences which have “a connection to terrorism”, but I think that the context was a little more nuanced than the noble Lord suggests.
I agree with the noble Lord about enforceability, but to have a particular officer responsible for enforcing each prohibition does not seem to me practicable—if I have understood the proposal properly. I have points to make about enforceability in the next group; the answer may well be electronic monitoring.
I wish to raise a point that comes a bit from left field. I am sure that I am not the only Member to have received an email invitation today to a meeting to be told about “alcolocks”, which are, apparently, programmed mechanisms installed in cars, which can detect whether the driver has been drinking. The Minister is nodding. I thought that I would use this opportunity to see whether he knows anything about this. How does the car know whether you have had six brandies or half a pint of shandy? I do not know—but it seems quite intriguing. I shall not hold him to it if he does not know.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson, I have more qualms about these particular prohibitions, broadly from a civil liberties point of view. The problem with the idea of bringing in endless surveillance and state bodies to keep their eye on people, banning people and prohibiting people on the basis that this is necessary because it will allow people to avoid prison is that it turns the community into something with prison-like conditions. I do not feel easy with that in terms of there being a ban on public events and entering drinking establishments, with new restriction zones and so on.
Where I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson, is on how on earth it will work, practically. How will probation cope with monitoring these prohibitions? I cannot understand how it would be feasible. We keep discussing the problem of probation not having enough resources and we are then assured that more resources will be made available; we are now asking probation to do even more than they were doing before. Resources always implies money, but this is about a lot more than money. I would have thought that a lot of the new things that this Bill is asking probation officers to do will require a lot more training.
The Minister will know that, for example, because of the huge case loads that probation officers have, the last thing that they want to be dealing with are IPP prisoners, who are at the very least challenging. We know that, in many instances, in order to get them off the books, they adopt a risk-averse attitude, which means that anyone who even just technically breaks a licence condition—maybe they are a late for a meeting, or something like that—suddenly gets recalled into prison. So there are all sorts of complications around saying simply that probation will do it.
I know that when I raise problems with probation, immediately there is a rush with people saying how brilliant probation officers are; this is not a slight on them as individuals but a problem with the service. In fact, if anything, it is probation officers themselves who feel frustrated and are tearing their hair out because they are expected to do so much with so little. There is a real reason why there is a difficulty in recruiting new trainee probation officers and where there are insufficient staff numbers.
What I do not understand is how we would monitor this. Let us say that there is, for example, a prohibition on going to the pub or a drinking establishment—I cannot remember what they are called now. Are probation officers going to be standing outside the pub? How will they know whether someone is entering a pub or not? That is why I think that the amendments in this group are quite useful. Is this just a box-ticking exercise? If it is a practical thing, someone will have to let the drinking establishments know and monitor whether anyone goes into them. I also think that there is a whole paraphernalia, and there are potentially quite difficult issues when restriction zones are put in place. Who decides where they are and what they are based on, and who is going to monitor them?
There is a wide range of new restrictions and prohibitions that are only being put in place because of the move to remove people from prison. Community probation officers do not have the resources; this will be not just technically bureaucratic to enact, but it will not keep the public safe or enable them to keep an eye on efficacy. Consequently, I would like to tighten up the whole notion of these orders via amendments such as these, but I am not even convinced that they are the way to go or that they are anything other than a problematic example of why there is a prior problem of letting everybody out of prison too early when you do not have the resources in the community.
Baroness Hamwee
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to probe the enforceability of a public event attendance prohibition requirement.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I too am intrigued and concerned as to how these conditions will be monitored and enforced. I did not support the amendments that are aimed at the same question in the previous group, because I do not think we should make, for instance, the licensee of a pub or the operator of a sports ground the enforcer of conditions. Many of us have been critical enough, in the area of immigration, about making landlords and so on enforcers of government legislation. But I think there is still a lot to explore in this.
I said that I assumed the answer was going to be electronic monitoring, but how is that to be done, unless we are requiring the offender to be confined to a particular place—to home, for instance? They are not as strict as that; they exclude certain events. So does somebody need to know where events—an Oasis concert, a Premier League match or a fringe theatre with a tiny capacity—are taking place? How is this actually checked? The Minister said that the probation officer will get the data from a tag. I do not know enough about how these work to know whether the probation officer can easily find out whether somebody has attended a Sheffield United match. How is that actually done in practice on a day-to-day basis? Does the probation officer have the GPS co-ordinates for everything that might be an issue? It would be helpful if we could understand more about this.
I am concerned about live facial recognition—if it is being used; I do not know whether it will be. It works on the basis of a watch list, which is created for a particular occasion but then, as I understand it, will be deleted; it is not something which would go on for several months. I had thought that live facial recognition was only for the period of surveillance. I am asking for much more briefing on this, which we would then want to be in the public domain, but we need to understand it first.
My noble friend Lord Marks will be speaking to our Amendment 106, but I cannot overemphasise the importance of this amendment, or something like it. The objective is reducing reoffending, so one must enable employment, education, rehabilitation programmes and so on. We know from the experience of other orders that, for instance, the requirement to report to a police station can be imposed with absolutely no regard to the demands on an individual, who is then forced to take a day off work. I am interested to hear how enforcement works with the support for the offender, which is implicit in the activities.
My noble friend Lord Foster of Bath, in making the overarching point about necessity and proportionality, has hit on what is, to my mind, a very important point. I wish I had thought of it, but I support him in this. I beg to move Amendment 60.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 61, 66, 102 and 104, standing in my name. I find myself in the unusual position of broadly agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on Amendment 60.
This is an example of what I suppose could be called legislative drag, where time has elapsed between the publication of legislation—in this case, Second Reading in the Commons was at the beginning of September—and real-life events today. I want to talk about the broader context of how these proposals and policies may have an impact, in particular on the hospitality sector.
In principle, we do not oppose the creation of new tools to protect the public or manage offenders, but their success, as other noble Lords have said, depends significantly on enforceability. Clauses 14 and 15 lack any operational detail on how the bans on pub or event attendance organisations will be implemented or enforced, making them currently unworkable in practice. It is unrealistic and unfair to expect pubs, bars, off-licences and event venues to police court-ordered bans without a clear enforcement structure. The hospitality sector is already in severe financial distress, and I will return to that shortly. If enforcement is not intended to fall on venues, the Government must explain how probation and policing will manage compliance, given existing resources and the staffing crises that we discussed on day one of Committee.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I am happy to provide further examples if that would be helpful but it may be that the tag, if Lucy had had one on, would have been used by the monitoring team to identify where she had or had not been.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for Amendment 106, which would allow for exemptions to restriction zone conditions. I am proud to be a Minister in the Government who introduced this measure. These zones will pin certain offenders down to a specific geographical area to ensure that victims can move freely everywhere else. I must pay tribute to those who campaigned tirelessly for this crucial change, including Diana Parkes and Hetti Barkworth-Nanton.
I hope that it will help your Lordships if I explain in a little more detail how the process of drawing a restriction zone will work. Where a restriction zone is deemed necessary and proportionate to manage risk, probation officers will conduct a detailed risk assessment. They will work closely with victim liaison officers, to ensure that victims have been given the chance to make representations where appropriate, but they must also ensure that offenders can access all necessary services, including employment, with consideration of public protection and risk. They must not be a barrier to employment or prevent rehabilitation; as someone who has championed the employment of ex-offenders for years, noble Lords will know that this is the last thing I would want to happen.
On a recent visit to the Serco office in Warrington, I saw at first hand how exclusion zones are designed. I saw the detailed consideration and care that is given when developing them; I will ensure that the same level of attention is given to restriction zones when those are being drawn, with due consideration given to the needs of both the victim and the offender. Let us be clear: these considerations are inextricably linked. Supporting offenders to rehabilitate and stopping the cycling of reoffending are vital parts of ensuring that restriction zones protect victims. Restriction zones, like all restrictive measures, must accommodate rehabilitative aims, such as employment; that way, we will better protect not just a single victim but all victims.
Amendment 101A from the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, would give the Parole Board oversight of restriction zones. Although I thank the noble Baroness for raising this matter, my firm view is that, as I have set out throughout this speech, the Probation Service is best placed to monitor and request licence conditions; and that the judiciary is best placed to hand out orders.
The Parole Board is best placed to develop risk management plans on release for indeterminate sentence offenders and more serious determinate sentence offenders whose release it directs. It is not for it to do so in cases where offenders are subject to automatic release. If an offender is released automatically without any involvement of the Parole Board, it would be inappropriate for the board then to be asked to approve a restriction zone for an offender whose release it did not direct; it would have no knowledge of the individual and their case. As with current provisions, it is right that the Probation Service will manage the licence for these cases. It is the one who know the offender and the risk they pose best.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for his Amendment 110ZA. I agree that it is important to ensure that electronic monitoring is imposed where it is proportionate and necessary to do so. When an electronic monitoring condition is being considered following an individual’s release from custody, the Probation Service will carry out an extensive assessment of that individual’s circumstances to ensure that electronic monitoring is used appropriately as part of its wider supervision. Conducting these assessments via the professional judgment of our Probation Service remains a core principle to ensuring that electronic monitoring is used only where it is proportionate and necessary. I have full confidence in the checks and decisions taken by the Probation Service, and I have confidence in the technology that is used to enforce any electronic monitoring requirement. I can assure the noble Lord that the electronic monitoring suitability checks currently in place and carried out by the Probation Service are robust; they ensure that the imposition of electronic monitoring will not result in harm to victims or perpetrators.
We are confident that probation officers will continue to impose electronic monitoring where it is proportionate and necessary to do so. I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, this is one of those occasions when scrutiny is important to both the proponents and opponents of a proposition. Some of us want to make sure that it works; others want to show that it will not. I hope that the Minister will understand that, certainly from these Benches, we are seeking not to oppose what he is planning but to understand how it will work. To me, identifying where there is a breach is the big question mark. I enthusiastically accept his suggestion that we can have further briefings; although I never like doing things in private, those are a necessary step.
The noble Viscount criticised my drafting rather than the substance—at least, I hope that was the case. I know of the case of the lady whose wrists were too slim to take a tag. It was worse than that. She kept being told that she was in breach because it was understood that she was refusing to wear a tag, whereas she could not. There are a lot of situations that one cannot quite imagine until one discovers that they have actually happened.
I am sure that we will come back to this subject of enforcement. Having had a look at the relevant clause just now, I am relieved that these are not among the provisions that will commence immediately on the passing of the Act. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Sentencing Bill
Baroness Hamwee ExcerptsMonday 1st December 2025
(4 days, 11 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Sentencing Bill 2024-26 View all Sentencing Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 142-II(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Second Marshalled List) - (1 Dec 2025)
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
I may have missed it, but I am still unclear about what happens under Clause 18 and new Section 118A. If there is no approval of the business plan from the Lord Chancellor, does the Sentencing Council continue with its work as if there were a business plan and make it up as it goes along? I am sure that it does not quite do that, but the clause does leave the position hanging.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 84, 85 and 148A in my name. These amendments concern the publication of sentencing remarks, the collection and publication of sentencing data, and the review of the effect of this Bill on community and voluntary sectors once it comes into force.
The Government are, of course, of the opinion that the near blanket presumption of suspended sentences will lead to less crime in the long run. Reports have suggested, however, that it will increase offences by almost 400,000 per year. I certainly hope that the Government are right in their assessment because, clearly, safer streets is a goal which would unite all noble Lords.
If we are to assess whether this Bill is anything of a success, we need the data to support it. We on these Benches do not and will not simply accept reform based on blind faith. Reform has to be backed by accountability, visibility and evidence. Amendment 84 concerns sentencing remarks. We propose that all transcripts of sentencing remarks from the Crown Court be published and be made freely available online for the public to access.
Sentencing is not just a technical exercise. It is a moment of public judgment. A judge’s remarks concern the reasoning behind both why a particular sentence was imposed and why it was for a particular duration. That reasoning is essential for victims, families, communities and the public at large to understand what justice looks like in practice. Without that transparency, justice is done behind a veil, and that is liable to undermine confidence. In a sense, the Government agree with that principle—at least they did when their manifesto was written.
In their manifesto, they observed of criminals that
“the sentences they receive often do not make sense either to victims or the wider public”.
I suggest that the publication of sentencing remarks is key to rebuilding public confidence and holding the judicial system to account. It is trite that open justice is an essential foundation of our democracy. If sentencing is to become more complex and discretionary under the Bill, especially with the expanded use of suspended sentences and community orders, public understanding and scrutiny will become even more important.
Research by the International Association for Court Administration has shown a clear link between transparency in sentencing and public confidence in the justice system. Yet, even now, our current system remains opaque. Though sentencing remarks may be broadcast in a limited number of high-profile cases, many judgments remain inaccessible. Of course, transcripts are available, but only at cost and if requested. For many victims and their families, as well as third parties such as researchers, that is a prohibitive barrier. We must replace selective access with universal and consistent transparency, especially in the wake of this Bill.
Amendment 85 would require the courts to report key sentencing data and the Government to publish aggregate statistics at certain periods. That would provide the public with information on how many sentences are given for which offences, their length and offender demographics. If we are to place thousands more offenders under community supervision and expand the use of suspended sentences, we must be able to monitor the consequences: who is being sentenced, for what and with what impact on reoffending or public safety. Without such data, the Bill becomes a blind experiment, and we will not know whether it is achieving its objectives. We must not shy away from accountability or reject the principles that underpin democracy.
Amendment 148A addresses the impact of the Bill on the community and voluntary sectors. I am sure we all recognise that these organisations provide vital support to those most affected by crime, whether they are victims or offenders, and often they are the backbone of effective rehabilitation in the community. The Bill’s provisions will place new and substantial demands on those services, and without proper oversight we risk overwhelming the charities, community groups and voluntary agencies tasked with delivering critical interventions. Many of the arguments made in support of Amendments 84 and 85 apply to this amendment too. It would require the Government, within 12 months of commencement, to publish an assessment of the Bill’s impact on the sector. Again, that is not some bureaucratic nicety but a matter of transparency and fairness.
We cannot turn a blind eye to the practical realities on the ground. To accept this amendment is to place evidence and accountability at the forefront of this information. We owe that to this sector and the wider public. Therefore, I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I want to say a word about Amendment 84 on sentencing remarks. I was proposing to leave it until the Victims and Courts Bill, but this gives me an initial run at it, as it were. I am glad to have the opportunity to ask the Minister for an update on the MoJ’s work on this. At a 3 September meeting of the Constitution Committee, of which I am a member, I asked the then Lord Chancellor about progress in this area. She said:
“I do not believe we are far from having a tech solution that meets the test of accuracy … we are testing market solutions for speed and accuracy. Then we will need to take a view on operational viability and how quickly it could be rolled out”.
She said:
“It is a long process, and it has a cost attached to it”,
but went on to emphasise that
“accuracy … is the problem at the moment”.
If the Minister could update the Committee, that would be very welcome. The point in general is not only about sentencing remarks. My honourable friend for Richmond Park has been pursuing the matter of transcripts. She realises that this is important not only with sentencing remarks but with full transcripts of trials—victims, if that is a word I can use, when there has been a not guilty finding, need help to understand what has happened. As the noble Lord has said, access after the event, to go back and look to see what was said, is very important. None of us relies on our memory—we all look at Hansard, for instance. The publication within two sitting days may be overambitious, when I look at what the Lord Chancellor said—but then she has perhaps not met our Hansard writers, who do it in much less than two days.
Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill
Baroness Hamwee ExcerptsWednesday 4th June 2025
(6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 View all Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 99-R-I Marshalled list for Report - (2 Jun 2025)
Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, I agree very much with what the noble Viscount has said. His amendment, like others in this group, would give some helpful clarity to an extremely unclear piece of legislation. I think we are about to make bad law, because the Government have been unable or unwilling to define what “personal characteristics” are. We do not know what will fall within the range of prohibitions placed on the Sentencing Council. It will be left with an undefined scope and an undefined extent. Race, religion and belief, or cultural background, whatever that is, are listed, but after that it becomes a matter for speculation as to what might be included.
The Government insist that the list that appears in the Bill is non-exhaustive. In a letter sent to several of us, the Minister states, but without citing any authority, that “personal characteristics” include sex, gender identity, age, physical disability and pregnancy or “other similar conditions”. What is similar to pregnancy? I have been puzzling over that for some time and I am not quite sure.
The Minister did not mention autism, a background of local authority care or experience of sexual abuse, although in the latter case the Government said, in a different letter, that it is not a personal characteristic to have been a victim, perhaps a repeated victim, of sexual abuse. What is included in the list appears to be in the minds of Ministers, or whatever may appear in the minds of Ministers at some later date, leaving the Sentencing Council and, indirectly, judges and magistrates in some confusion as to what the Government intended.
I think and hope that, in making decisions about whether to call for a pre-sentence report, courts will not be influenced by this whole row—it would be very unfortunate if they were—but there is just a slight risk that this may become an area in which courts start to think, “This is a bit political, we’d better not go there”. That must not happen. The still-existing freedom of courts to decide to have a pre-sentence report is not directly affected by the Bill. My worry is that it might have an indirect effect.
Law can have consequences. I foresee the day when a non-exhaustive list of prohibitions will appear in some other Bill on some other subject. What will happen then? We will be told that non-exhaustive lists of prohibited actions are an established practice and appeared in the Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025. It will become a precedent that will certainly get used on some future occasion, and I think that is a dangerous thing to be happening.
My noble friend’s Amendment 2 restores the Sentencing Council’s freedom, if there is good cause, to issue guidelines that refer to personal characteristics. I urge support for it and, if he presses it to a vote, which I hope he will, he will certainly have my vote and, I hope, those of others who are concerned to protect the ability of the Sentencing Council, a body of some distinction, to do its job in the light of sensible judgment, following discussion with the Government wherever that is necessary or appropriate.
I turn finally to Amendment 9, which is in my name. The Minister has asserted that pregnancy is a personal characteristic, falling within the restrictions imposed by Section 2 of the Bill. But there is case law accepting pregnancy as a reason to order a pre-sentence report, in R v Thompson 2024. Modern slavery was similarly referred to as grounds for a pre-sentencing report in R v Kurmekaj 2024, and being a young offender is dealt with in R v Meanley 2022.
It is difficult to accept that the case law should be overridden by the Bill if it becomes an Act. The Minister has asserted that it is overridden, asserting in his letter that the Bill would make
“such direction about obtaining PSRs across existing guidelines unlawful”.
“Unlawful” is the word used in the Minister’s letter. Nevertheless, he claimed that
“it will not prevent guidelines from reminding sentencers in more general terms that PSRs will be necessary”
when
“an assessment of the offender’s personal circumstances would be beneficial”.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us in a tangle of legal uncertainty, and there is no excuse for that. I suggest that the Minister should accept my amendment, leaving the Sentencing Council free to issue guidelines that reflect and draw attention to well-established case law on the value and importance of pre-sentence reports in cases of the kinds I referred to.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I confess that I am still struggling to understand this Bill, despite it having only one clause. The Minister was as helpful as he could be in Committee, and we all know his pedigree, but he has been dealt a very difficult hand. I think this is a bad Bill and, as my noble friend has just said, it is going to be bad law. We all know the political background to it. On Monday, at Second Reading of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, one noble Lord used the delicate word, which I will repeat, “presentational”. I think that is quite a good synonym. The Constitution Committee has commented on the Bill, picking up very much the points that the noble Viscount and my noble friend made and the response from the Ministry of Justice has not, I think, taken us any further.
In Committee, I asked what was meant by the words “framed by reference to”. I still do not really understand them. This has caused me to table Amendment 3, although I realise it is a bit risky pursuing this, because we may be told from the Dispatch Box that the Bill is more restrictive than we would actually want to see, and it is arguable that as it stands, the guidelines can refer to characteristics depending on the law which is being shaped.
The legislation should be clear and certain—points which were made very clearly by the Constitution Committee—especially in this sort of situation. It is curious that the Bill seeks to pit the state against a body such as the Sentencing Council.
Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill
Baroness Hamwee ExcerptsMonday 19th May 2025
(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 View all Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 99-I Marshalled list for Grand Committee - (15 May 2025)
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I tabled the next amendment in this group, Amendment 3, but, having had a conversation with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, I hope that we might hear from him, as I think he would be very helpful to the Committee at this point. I say that in case anyone looks at me and wonders why I am not speaking at this point.
Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for that suggestion. I hope not to detain the Committee for long. I declare some interests at the outset. When I was Lord Chief Justice, I was president of the Sentencing Council and thus responsible for appointing all its judicial members, with the concurrence of the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor appointed all the lay members with my concurrence. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I was present at the Second Reading debate but did not speak. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, spoke, and we considered that, for the sake of all those there, one former Lord Chief Justice was probably enough.
In one way or another, all the amendments in this group seek to confine or define what is meant by the term “personal characteristics” in the Bill. As all noble Lords will have noted, the term is not defined in the Bill and, in accord with various noble Lords who have tabled amendments, my strong view is that it needs a definition. Although there is no definition in the Bill, the Explanatory Notes try to provide some further explanation. They use the term “demographic cohort” as a synonym for personal characteristics, and they contrast “personal characteristics” with “personal circumstances”, but neither of those terms is in the Bill or defined.
In the Second Reading debate, the Minister said:
“The Bill states that personal characteristics include race, religion or belief, and cultural background, but these are examples and not a comprehensive list. ‘Personal characteristics’ is intended to include a wide range of characteristics, such as sex, gender identity, physical disabilities and pregnancy status”.—[Official Report, 7/5/25; col. 1625.]
The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, explores what might be meant by “cultural background”, which is, of course, a term that came from the Sentencing Council’s draft guideline. Like others, I find it an extremely elastic and elusive concept. However, the inclusion of pregnancy status as a personal characteristic illustrates the problem caused by the lack of a statutory definition.
A few minutes later, in the same debate, the Minister said:
“A particular concern was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about how the Bill may impact on women—in particular, pregnant women … To be clear, nothing in the Bill prevents judges requesting pre-sentence reports for pregnant women, nor will it affect Court of Appeal case law, which states that a pre-sentence report is desirable in the case of pregnant or postnatal women”.—[Official Report, 7/5/25; cols. 1626-27.]
With the greatest of respect to the Government, this exposes a degree of incoherence. The Government’s view is that pregnancy is a personal characteristic. It follows that, if this Bill passes in its current form, it would be unlawful for the Sentencing Council to include it in a guideline on pre-sentence reports; and that it would thus be unlawful for the Sentencing Council to give guidance that reflects judgments of the Court of Appeal. Is that really what the Government are trying to achieve? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who sits directly opposite me, has an amendment to deal with that extraordinary outcome.
Although the Government have shied away from defining “personal characteristic” in the Bill, they have not had such inhibition in correspondence both to the Constitution Committee, on which I serve, and to all Peers. In a letter to all Peers, in a long section headed “Definition of ‘personal circumstances’”, the Minister explains that the European Court of Human Rights uses the term when considering, for the purposes of Article 14 discrimination, whether a person enjoys another status; the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, has already referred in passing to some of the jurisprudence on that matter. However, if I may say so—in complete agreement with the Government—that term in the Strasbourg case law has no crisp definition, and it does not do so for very good reasons.
The Minister refers in his letter to jurisprudence in the House of Lords, where, in the context of Article 14, my noble and learned friend Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury—I am glad to see that he is in his place—and my noble and learned friend Lady Hale provided assistance with the meaning of “personal characteristics”. In his letter, the Minister approbates the interpretation of my noble friend Lord Neuberger, who said that
“the concept of ‘personal characteristic’ … generally requires one to concentrate on what somebody is, rather than what he is doing or what is being done to him”.
If it is the Government’s view that those wise words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, provide the kernel of a definition for the term, “personal characteristics”, why on earth is it not in the Bill? It matters because the correspondence goes on to suggest that the observations of both the noble Lord, Lord Neuberger, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, and also, historically, Lord Steyn, would be a legitimate aid to construction to assist the Sentencing Council. I emphasise that it would not be a legitimate aid to construction should the matter ever find its way to a court—that is to say, the noble Lord’s letter, rather than the observations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger.
That comment, if I may respectfully say so, perhaps illustrates a faint misunderstanding in the Government. It is not only the Sentencing Council that needs to understand with clarity what the term “personal circumstances” means. All those who respond to consultation put out by the Sentencing Council must also be able to understand what it means. In these fevered times, it is not impossible that there might be a challenge to what the Sentencing Council has put in a draft guideline, and which might emerge in a final guideline. So, a court will have to—at least perhaps—interpret this phrase.
It is with that in mind that I support all or any amendments that seek to bring some clarity to what “personal circumstances” means in this context. Without a definition, I fear that the Government are storing up trouble for the future.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I have Amendments 3 and 12 in this group. Like other noble Lords, I am sure, I have found myself very torn. I basically oppose the Bill, but we are having to deal with it today at the level of detail.
I am sorry not to be able to go absolutely all the way with the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, but I am worried about the term “protected characteristics”. Perhaps this is taking too short-term a view, being too aware of the baggage that the term carries at the moment, but I have a nervous reaction against using a term which is in particular legislation for a particular purpose.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, mentioned the report of the Constitution Committee, of which I am also a member, which recommended that
“the Bill should be amended to ensure appropriate legislative certainty and clarity”,
going on to say there should be
“a full definition of the ‘personal characteristics’ on the face of the Bill or … an alternative term which is clearly legally defined”,
and also commented on retrospectivity. If the Bill is intended to apply to guidelines which are already operational, this should be explicit in the Bill.
Over the weekend, I thought about another approach to this. It was too late to table it as an amendment, but as we will come back to this clause—essentially, the whole of the Bill—on Report, I thought I would float it now. I found myself increasingly intrigued by the phrase
“framed by reference to different personal characteristics”.
Does that mean that the guidelines can include some characteristics if they are not the frame for them? Does it mean framed alone or only by reference to personal characteristics? I want to get rid of the Bill entirely, as I have said, but anything that will ameliorate the effects is worth looking at.
Baroness Hamwee
“(4A) But sentencing guidelines about pre-sentence reports must include provision framed by reference to the factors considered in the case of each offender (“O”) most likely to reduce offending by O.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that pre-sentence reports include information relating to reducing offending.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I will speak also to my Amendment 8 in this group. We ended the last group by using “preferential” as distinct from “different”. My Amendment 2 is intended to be a positive one. I do not think that factors considered to be most likely to reduce offending by the offender would be preferential. They might be different, but they would be different while responding to the characteristics and maybe circumstances of the offender. The Bill is negative, as some noble Lords said on the last group, and I am sure we all agree about the reoffending point. I accept that is not the only purpose of sentencing but it is perhaps most closely related to pre-sentence reports. So I suggest that that acknowledgement should go up front.
Amendment 8 is also a point of emphasis. Seeking a pre-sentence report is a matter for the court, on the basis that we have been discussing as it is now and as it will be. The Bill is about guidelines on pre-sentence reports. As I understand it, there is no restriction on the content of them—that is a matter for probation to pursue—and neither is there any restriction on what the court in any event orders. I would be very surprised if the Minister disagrees with me on any of this, but I would like to get his agreement on the record. I beg to move.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak about probation and reducing reoffending—topics that are very important. I would like to use this opportunity to shine a light on the important work that probation practitioners do to support the sentencing process. I hope I can reassure noble Lords about the processes that are already in place.
I will speak first to Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. This would require the Sentencing Council to include references to the factors most likely to reduce reoffending in its sentencing guidelines on pre-sentence reports. While I cannot support this amendment, as it would remove the Bill’s prohibition on sentencing guidelines on pre-sentence reports being framed with reference to offenders’ personal characteristics, I agree that the role of probation in supporting reducing reoffending is an important one.
The purpose of a pre-sentence report is defined by section 31 of the Sentencing Code as being a report which
“is made or submitted by an appropriate officer with a view to assisting the court in determining the most suitable method of dealing with an offender”.
A completed pre-sentence report will therefore provide sentencers with an effective assessment of risk, alongside targeted assessments of individuals’ needs, by confidently articulating suitable proposals that balance the needs of public protection, punishment and the rehabilitative aspects of sentencing.
Depending on the specific circumstances of the case, the probation practitioner writing the pre-sentence report will obtain information from both the defendant and external sources in respect of mental health, drug and alcohol needs and services, accommodation, finances and youth justice contact, as well as consideration of wider circumstances that could be indicative of additional vulnerability or complexity for the defendant.
A pre-sentence report will always include an assessment of the risk the defendant poses and to whom, including the risk of serious harm and likelihood of reoffending analysis. In making the sentencing recommendation, the pre-sentence report’s author must also consider the purposes of sentencing under the Sentencing Code, including the reduction of crime, and reform and rehabilitation.
The Probation Service has always had to balance public protection with rehabilitation, and striking the right balance is a long-standing part of the culture of the service, which is reinforced by the messages and expectations set not just by senior operational leaders but by me and other Ministers. I hope I can therefore reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that rehabilitative principles have always been, and will continue to be, at the heart of the pre-sentence advice provided to courts, and that she will feel able to withdraw this amendment.
Amendment 7, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, proposes imposing a requirement on sentencing guidelines on pre-sentence reports to promote a greater use of such reports as part of sentencing. I share the noble Lord’s desire to see greater use of pre-sentence reports. As I have set out, a good PSR assesses the offender’s behaviour and the risks they pose, and recommends sentencing options tailored to those risks and needs. We know that the number of pre-sentence reports has declined, with a 44% reduction over the last decade.
There have been several reasons for this, but it may well be that judicial perceptions of probation’s capacity to deliver PSRs may influence that decision. Judicial confidence in probation is a key priority for me and for the Lord Chancellor, and I hope I can reassure noble Lords about the steps we are taking to maximise probation’s ability not just to deliver PSRs but to deliver them in a timely way and to a high quality.
First, we are continuing to invest in increasing staffing levels in probation. Last year, we recruited 1,000 new trainee probation officers, and this year we have raised that target to 1,300. That continued investment in staff is helping us fill vacancies, including in probation court teams, where last year we increased our target staffing levels.
Secondly, we are taking steps to increase the capacity of probation staff providing advice to courts. We are beginning to roll out a new digital service, prepare a case for sentence, that links to HMCTS systems and which means that listing information about upcoming cases comes straight to probation staff, rather than having to be looked up and rekeyed into the new system. This in turn will help probation court teams do the right preparation in advance, so they can identify cases in which a court is likely to need further information and have that ready on the day if the court requests a report.
We are also improving access to video-link facilities to promote greater use of remote interviewing, so that, where an offender is remanded in custody and the court adjourns for a pre-sentence report to be written, probation staff can easily carry out an interview to inform the report. Through measures such as these, we can better focus probation staff’s precious time on providing the court with the right information, rather than on chasing up data from partner agencies or having to react to court requests at short notice.
Thirdly, we are trying to maximise the different opportunities for courts to request pre-sentence reports. For example, the PSR before plea scheme allows for a pre-sentence report to be written early on in certain cases where there is an anticipated guilty plea, and it is likely that the defendant will be sentenced in the magistrates’ court.
I hope I have reassured the noble Lord about the Government’s commitment to increasing probation’s ability to provide the best possible advice to courts, and that he will be happy as a result not to press his amendment.
Amendment 8 is intended to prevent sentencing guidelines restricting the contents of a pre-sentence report or interfering with a court order. I take this opportunity to briefly reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that nothing in the Bill as currently drafted, nor sentencing guidelines themselves, will do this. Following the Bill’s passage, sentencers will retain their current discretion to decide whether to order a pre-sentence report in appropriate cases. All the Bill does is ensure that the content of sentencing guidelines about pre-sentence reports does not provide for differential access to pre-sentence reports for certain groups over others.
The Bill also does not impact the types of sentencing options available to the court. Sentencers will retain their discretion to impose the sentence that they consider most appropriate, based on the specifics of the individual case before them and in line with any relevant sentencing guidelines. I hope that the noble Baroness is reassured and that she will not press her amendment.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, that was the response I expected, and I thank the Minister for it. On the response from the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, I shall take the sympathy. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I understood from the noble Lord’s explanation of the amendments that this group is about parliamentary oversight. I am not clear from Amendment 9 whether the submission of guidelines to the Secretary of State is submission for approval. I am also interested in the fact that, as I read the amendment, the Secretary of State would be required to give effect to the guidelines. That raises a question: is the Secretary of State required to give effect to them whether or not she agrees them? I cannot resist this opportunity to say that we all refer to regulations as if they are a panacea but we all know that amendment to them is very rare.
Lord Burnett of Maldon (CB)
My Lords, I shall make one or two observations on this group. I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, but, before anyone considers this additional process, it is important to have in mind what already exists. All guidelines that the Sentencing Council eventually issues are subject to extensive consultation—with the public consultation and with interested bodies—but, more importantly, they are subject to political consultation. That arises in two quite different contexts.
The first is that the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice are consulted. Of course, that happened in connection with this guideline, which became controversial although it was not seen as controversial by Ministers who were then in the Ministry of Justice. That is not the end of the political involvement, though, because a statutory consultee for all sentencing guidelines is the Justice Committee of the House of Commons. Again, in this particular instance, the Justice Committee was consulted. As all here know, that committee comprises Members of Parliament from a broad cross-section of parties, and, as it happens, they, too, thought it uncontroversial. So there are those two political consultees. However, that is not the end of the matter because the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor have on the Sentencing Council itself an observer who is able, on behalf of the ministry, to raise any matters of concern.
So, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and this amendment, it seems to me that upsetting the extremely carefully calibrated scheme enacted by the 2009 Act is unnecessary.
Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill
Baroness Hamwee ExcerptsWednesday 7th May 2025
(6 months, 4 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 View all Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 30 April 2025 - (30 Apr 2025)
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I start by saying how sorry I was to hear of the death of the noble and learned Lord—who I just think of as Terry—Lord Etherton. His words were always wise, measured and compassionate, and we will miss him. More positively, we look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Nichols.
This one-clause Bill provokes such strong feelings, particularly when there is much we can agree on, but our approach from the Liberal Democrat Benches differs a good deal from that of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. This must be one of those situations where one really does not want to start from here, not only because I would like to rewind, but because we are expecting very soon the review of sentencing by David Gauke. That should be the basis for a debate about sentencing because the debate needs to be wider than this Bill.
We are very concerned about fast-tracking this legislation, which we do not see as necessary or desirable. That is a constitutional point. I am a member of the Constitution Committee. I think the only members who are able to talk today are my noble friend Lord Beith and I. That committee takes the view that fast-tracking is not necessary and says so in a report to the House that was agreed at about noon today and published at about the point that we started this debate. Obviously, the Minister is not going to be able to respond to it today, but I urge that the MoJ responds to the points made by the committee well before Committee stage so that it is properly before the House and considered.
Pre-sentence reports are important and ideally should be for everyone—unless, of course, the court considers that they are not necessary—but the Probation Service is very overstretched. The Lord Chancellor said she was clearing the way to free up capacity in the Probation Service, so we will be interested to know the details of at what cost that might be to the service’s other work. That in itself deserves debate.
The Justice and Home Affairs Committee of this House, in a report Cutting Crime: Better Community Sentences, spent a little time on pre-sentence reports. I was chairing the committee at the time. The Minister was very welcoming of the report when we debated it. I recall he said that he had read it three times. I suspect his workload is such that he does not manage that for many reports, but we appreciated that. We referred to pre-sentence reports and their purpose, which we described as
“providing an expert assessment of the nature and causes of the offender’s behaviour, the risk they pose and to whom”,
and so on.
Witnesses to our committee raised concerns about the quality of reports, in part because of the pressures on the service, meaning that sentencers—we took the view—do not have the confidence in them that they should have. If a report falls short, the sentencer might not be able to consider an offender as an individual. We heard of PSRs based on what was happening in offenders’ lives eight or nine months previously and not taking into account steps they had taken in that period. We were told in evidence of the view that they were a “tick-box exercise” and not being done in a “meaningful, person-centred way”.
Sentencers may include mental health treatment requirements and alcohol treatment requirements, both of which require the consent of the offender, and drug rehabilitation requirements, which require suitability conditions met by probation making a recommendation to the court. For a sentence to be rehabilitative—one of the objectives of sentencing—it is obvious that the PSR process needs time and the offender to be engaged. The committee said that PSRs
“are an essential part of the sentencing process. They allow courts to tailor sentences to individual circumstances and give sentencers confidence that specific requirements are suitable and available”—
that is another matter—“in their area”. The Government agreed. I stress “individual” because one has surely to consider the whole person, and how do you do that while excluding characteristics?
As well as agreeing on the importance of PSRs, I think most of us would agree on the importance of equality. But that does not mean starting from a point of equality. How can we ignore how people with some characteristics, in particular those picked out in Clause 1, are overrepresented in the criminal justice system? The Sentencing Council acknowledges this in correspondence, and so does the Lord Chancellor.
It is then argued that differential treatment on the basis of race or ethnicity offends the principle of fair treatment before the law. Is “fair” really a synonym for “equal”? I take the view that one has to recognise where there is inequality in order to address it, and addressing it does not always—and not in this context—mean treating everyone the same. As the Sentencing Council notes, there are inequalities in the sentencing regime, for instance around age, which the Bill does not spell out, although this of course comes within the non-exhaustive list that is not on the face of the Bill.
The council’s view is that
“providing a sentencer with as much information as possible about the offender is one means by which … disparity might be addressed”.
While the council agreed with the Government that
“any systemic issue relating to different ethnic groups will be a matter of policy”,
Lord Justice Davis, who has been referred to, said that sentencers must still
“do all that they can to avoid a difference in outcome based on ethnicity. The judge will be better equipped to do that if they have as much information as possible about the offender”.
The Constitution Committee is currently undertaking work on the rule of law, and I am assured by those who are far more expert than me that positive measures are not necessarily incompatible with the rule of law. To me, the term “personal characteristics”, without definition, is confusing. The division between characteristics and circumstances is very grey. What, for instance, is addiction? I think it is a characteristic. That would undermine treatment, to which I have referred.
The list is not exhaustive, as I have said, and that adds to the confusion. There is a risk of confusing characteristics under this Bill with protected characteristics defined for a different piece of legislation. The Constitution Committee is also critical of the Bill because of the uncertainty—I might say incoherence—in this area. I really look forward to the MoJ’s response to the points that we make in the report.
The committee also refers to retroactivity, which offends constitutionality. Can the Minister explain to the House what is to happen with pre-sentence reports that are currently—or will be at the point when the Bill becomes law, as I assume it will—in the pipeline, including reports that have been prepared but are not yet before the court? Are they to be reviewed or rewritten? It is really quite confusing to fast-track a Bill to such an extent that commencement is immediate; normally there is time for those affected by legislation to prepare.
I keep coming back in my mind to the question of how one can sentence without recognising the whole person. I also wonder how one can amend a one-clause Bill without being accused of wrecking it, but I know that my noble friend Lord Marks has been thinking about this very carefully, and I am hopeful that we will find a way to make it a Bill that is both coherent and accessible. I wish—not only for procedural reasons but because the focus should be on an effective, trusted system—that we were not starting from here, and I hope this is not the finishing point.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I start my closing speech by paying tribute to the noble and learned Lord Etherton. Being relatively new to this place, I never got to know him, but it is clear how much he was deeply respected and admired. He has been described as a kind person, which is something that I hope one day would be my epitaph.
I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions over the course of today’s debate. The depth of knowledge and experience in this House has certainly been on full display. It has also been a pleasure to be in this place for the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Nichols of Selby. I warmly welcome her to this place and look forward to working with her in the years to come, as she clearly has a lot to contribute.
I thank noble Lords who have raised perceptive questions over the course of today’s debate and those who have spoken to me privately. I hope they will feel that I have addressed their points in my closing remarks. If I do not cover them now, I will follow up in writing to address their points. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, words matter. I hope that my closing words matter and are helpful in answering noble Lords’ questions.
As I set out in my opening speech, the Sentencing Council’s revised imposition guideline risked differential treatment before the law. As we have discussed, this Bill is not about the wider role and powers of the Sentencing Council. It is not about restricting the use of pre-sentence reports. In fact, this Government are committed to increasing the use of pre-sentence reports. Rather, it is about the very specific issue of the Sentencing Council issuing guidelines on pre-sentence reports with reference to an offender’s personal characteristics, rather than all the relevant facts and circumstances of the case.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Lord, Lord Bach, have asked why this Bill is necessary and whether it was possible to resolve the matter with the Sentencing Council without primary legislation. In response, I would explain that we first exhausted all other options prior to introducing this legislation. The imposition guideline was due to come into effect on 1 April this year. Ahead of this, the Lord Chancellor used her existing power to ask the Sentencing Council to reconsider. Unfortunately, the Sentencing Council declined to revise the draft guideline. It was right, at that point, to act quickly to introduce the legislation.
As a result, the Sentencing Council decided to put the guideline on pause while Parliament rightly has its say, and we are grateful to it for doing so. By acting quickly, we prevented a guideline coming into effect which risked differential treatment before the law. This legislation has been necessary to achieve that and to clarify this Government’s commitment to equality before the law.
Noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Beith, have questioned the scheduling of this Bill. I reassure noble Lords that the dates for Committee and Report have been agreed in the usual channels in the usual way.
The noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and my noble friend Lady Mattinson have spoken about the importance of trust and consistency in the justice system. As the speed with which we introduced the Bill demonstrates, this Government are definitive in their stance with regard to equality before the law. The issues that have been raised with regard to disproportionality in our justice system are the domain of government, politics and Parliament. This Bill serves to reassert our ability to determine this country’s policy on the issue of equality of treatment before the law.
As my noble friend Lady Mattinson set out, we must work to preserve trust in our excellent legal system. I thank her for sharing her considered views on this. It is essential to victims that they are able to trust our legal system and know that everyone will be treated equally before the law. Implementing a sentencing guideline that could lead to differential treatment before the law puts trust in the legal system at risk, which is why we acted quickly to address this.
To address the question from the noble Lords, Lord Jackson and Lord Wolfson, about what this Bill means for the future of the Sentencing Council, I reiterate that the Sentencing Council has done valuable work, bringing consistency to judicial decision-making. However, developments on the imposition guideline have clearly revealed a potential issue, where the council is dictating policy that is not this Government’s and that does not express the will of Parliament. The Lord Chancellor is therefore reviewing the powers and function of the Sentencing Council. It would not be appropriate to deal with that wider issue through fast-track legislation, given the significant policy and constitutional issues involved. It is right to take the time to consider more fundamental reform like this. The Lord Chancellor will be considering all options and I know that many in your Lordships’ House will have valuable experience to contribute.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and other noble Lords asked how this Bill interacts with the review of sentencing being led by David Gauke and ably supported by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett. I reassure noble Lords that this Bill will not have any impact. This Bill is addressing the specific matter at hand regarding the Sentencing Council guidelines. The sentencing review is a wider review of sentencing, and we look forward to considering its recommendations in due course.
I turn now to the questions over the detail of the Bill, which were raised by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Thomas and Lord Hope, the noble Lords, Lord Verdirame, Lord Beith, Lord Bach and Lord Wolfson, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu. What is clear from this debate is the Government’s objective to help ensure equality before the law. We are clear that an offender should be judged by a court on an individual basis, according to the particular facts and circumstances of their case. It is not for the Sentencing Council to set out in guidance that judgments should be made on the basis of personal characteristics such as race or ethnicity.
The Government have used the broad term “personal characteristics” to make it clear that any reference to preferential treatment for particular cohorts is unacceptable. The Bill states that personal characteristics include race, religion or belief, and cultural background, but these are examples and not a comprehensive list. “Personal characteristics” is intended to include a wide range of characteristics, such as sex, gender identity, physical disabilities and pregnancy status. This is broader than the concept of “protected characteristics” in the Equality Act, which is a closed list and not wide enough to address, for example, the reference in the guideline to being a member of a cultural minority.
After careful consideration, the Government have therefore concluded that the most appropriate and principled way to respond to the issues raised by the guideline is to use the broader concept of “personal characteristics” in the Bill. The term “demographic cohort” is used in the Bill’s Explanatory Notes. However, the use of “demographic cohort” was not intended to, and I believe does not, narrow the definition of “personal characteristics”. A demographic cohort is a way of describing people who share certain personal characteristics. It is used in the Explanatory Notes to provide additional context to the Bill, but it would not be an appropriate alternative to the current drafting and would, in my view, raise further difficult questions of definition regarding what amounts to a “demographic cohort”. The term “personal characteristics” is used and understood in other contexts, and the Government consider it is the best formulation to address the issues raised by the guideline.
The noble Lord, Lord Bach, raised concern over whether this Bill interferes with judicial independence. To be clear, this Bill does not in any way influence individual sentencing decisions. Individual sentencing decisions clearly remain a matter for the independent judiciary. However, as I have said previously, the issue of tackling disproportionate outcomes within the criminal justice system is a policy matter and should be addressed by Government Ministers. The narrow change introduced by the Bill targets aspects of the sentencing guidelines that relate to equality of inputs. We are therefore addressing a policy matter and are not encroaching on judicial independence.
It is regrettable that some of the recent debate has strayed into comments about individual judges and their decision-making. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will be reassured that this Government will always support judges to do their jobs independently. I know that the Lord Chancellor takes her duty to defend judicial independence very seriously. As a number of noble and noble and learned Lords have said today, we are very lucky to have a world-class and highly regarded judiciary.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Nichols of Selby, have rightly raised concerns about probation capacity, which is something that I think about in my role on a daily basis. One knock-on effect of this is the consistency and quality of pre-sentence reports. This Government support the wider use and improvement of pre-sentence reports within our courts. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, that they can be valuable in all cases and for all defendants, regardless of their membership of a certain cohort, and should be obtained unless a judge believes that they are unnecessary. We are committed to ensuring that pre-sentence reports are available when needed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked what will happen to pre-sentence reports that are being prepared when the Bill comes into effect. I reassure her that there will be no impact on pre-sentence reports in the process of being prepared. This Bill is not about the ability of a court to request a pre-sentence report. The test remains that, under section 30 of the Sentencing Code, a PSR should be requested unless it is considered unnecessary. This is about council guidelines and the need to protect the principle of equal treatment before the law.
We have publicly outlined the steps we are taking to increase capacity in the Probation Service to enable it to undertake more valuable work such as this. Next year, we will bring 1,300 additional new trainee probation officers on board, but as noble Lords are well aware, and I have spoken to a number of noble Lords privately about this, it takes time to train and induct new staff to allow them to become the brilliant probation officers we so highly value. I have a lot to do to help our fantastic probation staff achieve what we know is possible in the service.
To support our probation staff, we are embracing technology, including AI. Work is ongoing that is improving the flow of information—so critical to an accurate assessment of an offender’s risk—and new tools are beginning to strip away a probation officer’s administrative burden. There is much more work still to do. However, given the challenges the Probation Service faces, new staff and better processes are not sufficient on their own. We need to think about how we use the Probation Service, which faces a case load of just over 250,000 offenders, more effectively.
The theme of the debate, highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, has been tackling disproportionality across the criminal justice system. We know that more must be done to address inequalities and we are committed to tackling racial disparities, as I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, will be pleased to hear. As the Lord Chancellor set out in the other place, and the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, has questioned, she has commissioned a review into the data held by the Ministry of Justice on disparities, and we will carefully consider next steps. We are also taking action to increase diversity in our staff and working with the judiciary to make sure that our appointments are reflective of the society we serve. This has included supporting underrepresented groups to join the judiciary.
A particular concern was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about how the Bill may impact on women—in particular, pregnant women. As the chair of the Women’s Justice Board, I have paid particularly close attention to this matter and have also spoken with board members. To be clear, nothing in the Bill prevents judges requesting pre-sentence reports for pregnant women, nor will it affect Court of Appeal case law, which states that a pre-sentence report is desirable in the case of pregnant or postnatal women. Judges will therefore continue to be able to request pre-sentence reports in cases where they ordinarily would, including, for example, appropriate cases involving pregnant women, and we expect this to continue. We are committed to achieving equal outcomes for women.
In conclusion, this is a targeted and specific Bill which serves to protect the important principles of equality before the law. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and I look forward to engaging with them as the Bill progresses.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, before the Minister moves the Second Reading, he told the House, in justifying why the term “personal characteristics” is used here, that it is used in a number of contexts. I do not expect him to answer in detail now, but will he write to the House to explain what those contexts are so that we have them in our minds as well?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I will very happily write. As noble Lords are aware, I am not an expert on the finer details of the law, so that would actually help me as well. I beg to move.
Courts and Tribunals: Sitting Days
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
What I can say is that I have been in meetings with the Permanent Secretary and the Lord Chancellor and I would not like to be on the wrong side of them when they are talking directly to contractors—which they do every now and again.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, following the points made by the noble and learned Lord, does the Minister agree that it is about not only contract management but the design of the contract from the very beginning, so there can be break clauses or a contract may be terminated if it is not properly performed? Also, following the noble and learned Lord’s comments, does the Minister agree that what will be far more helpful to justice proceeding more speedily is to suggest not that pre-sentence reports are a bad thing but that well-designed pre-sentence reports can assist in the appropriate sentences being applied as part of the attempt to reduce reoffending?
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
Yes, I agree with the points the noble Baroness makes. The aspiration is to move towards a greater proportion of offenders having pre-sentence reports before they are sentenced. To me, that seems an obvious state of affairs. So, I agree with the point that the noble Baroness made on that. Regarding the contracts, I understand that they do have break clauses and can be terminated: that is a possibility within current contracts, as far as I understand it.
Drones: High-security Prisons
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Timpson (Lab)
The noble Lord is completely right. There are far too many people in prison who arrive addicted and stay addicted. They need an incentive and support not to take drugs. That is why I am a big fan of substance-free living wings and engaging with probation early so that, when people are released, we have a seamless link whereby probation picks up with all the drug workers on release.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, a major component of security regarding prisons must be stable, expert and sufficient staffing. The Minister referred to staff. When it give evidence to our Justice and Home Affairs Committee, the Prison Officers’ Association referred to the recruitment process as being simply not fit for purpose and said that it was not surprising that corrupt and underqualified officers were being recruited—referring in particular to online interviews. Can the Minister give the House any news about improving the recruitment process and the number of staff?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the question. Having run a business for many years and tried to find fantastic superstars to work with, I am well aware that we always want to find the best colleagues to work in our prisons. I am very engaged with the POA team as well. Noble Lords may be interested to know that we are currently at 99.5% staffing levels. That does not mean that everybody is trained and in the right place, but MoJ colleagues have made good progress on that. As regards the way recruitment works in our prisons, professionally trained assessors always take part in the interviews.
Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for the question. When he was having those conversations a number of years ago, I think he was also having some of them with me in meetings outside of his political meetings, as I was talking to him about recruiting offenders. As I mentioned before, there are a number of examples of where crime has come down: Texas, Louisiana and a number of other states in the US. The Dutch model is also something I have followed closely.
The noble Lord is right that reoffending needs to come down. I hope that I can instil the skills I learnt running the family business over the years in the culture, values and organisation of the Prison Service, to help it become better at delivering what we need to do on reform.
On the terms of reference on the sentencing review, I will not go into detail—they are in the Library—but I will give noble Lords a brief summary. Our ask to the panel is that we must punish offenders and always leave a space for dangerous offenders in our jails. We must
“encourage offenders to turn their backs on … crime”—
we want better citizens, not better criminals—and we must expand the range of punishment outside of prisons and focus on technology that curtails freedoms. I am sure that noble Lords will be pleased to know that one of the panel members may well, I suspect, be a Member of this House.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, we will hear from the Liberal Democrat Benches, which we have not heard from as yet.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, perhaps the review could be so bold as to look at the legislation which deals with mandatory sentencing and minimum sentences. The support around the House for community sentences is very welcome, but I think the Minister will agree—and perhaps he will confirm this—that community sentences need providers of treatments for mental health, alcoholism and so on, and all the services which support offenders. Will the review extend to the support for those providers and the whole gamut of what makes up a good community sentence?
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the question. Yes, I hope the panel will engage with the whole sector, and there are so many experts who have so much experience. As far as the scope of the sentencing review goes, it will be reviewing the framework around longer custodial sentences, including the use of minimum sentences and the range of sentences and maximum penalties available for different offences and how we administer them. The panel will also review the specific needs of young offenders, older offenders, female offenders and prolific offenders. It has a lot of work to do, and we hope it will do it by the spring.
Community Sentences (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)
Baroness Hamwee Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Hamwee
That this House takes note of the Report from the Justice and Home Affairs Committee Cutting crime: better community sentences (1st Report, Session 2023–24, HL Paper 27).
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I need to declare an interest. I am a trustee of the charity Safer London, whose focus is on keeping young people out of offending. We are in a rather different context from late June, when a debate was scheduled on a report by the House’s Select Committee that I chaired until earlier this year. I am particularly pleased that the new Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation—I hope I have that in the right order—is able to respond. On my behalf and, if I may, on behalf of the committee from which I have become time expired, I welcome him very warmly and with high expectations. So, no pressure, but he is now an old hand in this Chamber—after three days.
It is fair to say that the committee felt that it and the previous Justice Secretary were on the same wavelength. The then Government’s response to our report was published in February. It was careful and encouraging, but I hope the Minister will not feel constrained by it. We are, of course, interested in updates, new directions and the “how” as well as the “what”.
The committee’s starting point was, as the title indicates, cutting crime, particularly reoffending, and making better use of sentences served in the community. We looked at the benefits of community sentences to society—for instance, value for money, the intergenerational impact of imprisonment, and as a humane and practical response for the individual offender. The use of community sentences had dropped considerably, though there were and, no doubt, still are varying interpretations of the data.
During our work, prisons reached operational capacity. Then the Government announced proposals for revised early release, and we are all aware of the new Government’s plans. The issue is not just a matter of theoretical capacity and physical conditions, but scope for rehabilitative work. The committee well understood that the aims of sentencing include punishment. Under the 2020 Act, there are also the reduction of crime, the reform and rehabilitation of offenders, public protection and reparation.
There are positive reasons for the use of community sentences. One is that the offender can retain contact with his—most often it is a male, and I will refer to offenders as such—support networks, and his home and job, in both cases, if he has one. Imprisonment often means these are lost. The Minister may say something about employment and the importance of the stability of a home and a job, and, conversely, the much increased risks of reoffending without those stable bases. A previous Chief Inspector of Probation commented on HMPPS paying for accommodation for people coming out of prison. He said:
“What you need is to pay for the accommodation before they have had to go to prison in the first place”.
The issue of accommodation will only escalate. This is one of a number of areas that cry out for cross-departmental working.
Community sentences can and should be tailored to the individual, but that does not mean that they should not be robust and demanding. My noble friend Lord Beith, who was on the committee, commented that it is much easier to sit on your bunk all day—but actually, I think many of us would find that pretty demanding. One of the routes to a personalised sentence is through problem-solving courts and intensive-supervision courts, which work holistically. The Government’s response was a little cautious. The committee of course recognised that you cannot just randomly introduce new schemes, and we understand the value of pilots. Our recommendation was that there should be proper monitoring and evaluation of the pilots—because there are quite a lot—and that pilots should not be launched without a plan for evaluation. But we wanted to see best practice shared and scaled up: single pilots will not get us far nationally. Can the Minister update us on progress?
We were interested in incentivising offenders by deferring sentencing—positive behaviour before passing sentence means a less severe sentence—and a single judge following the progress of an offender, with regular reporting back to the judge during the sentence. I suppose that the courts backlog, alongside bulging prisons, means that this is a rather long-term aspiration. Integrated community sentence orders are being tried in Ireland, with incentives for engagement in rehabilitation and meaningful activities.
I certainly did not have the impression that every offender is resistant to orders incorporating treatment requirements, but I did get the impression that they are often not supported to be more than passive recipients of what is done to them. Treatment requirements to address drug and alcohol abuse and mental ill health need the offender’s consent. There seems to be a lack of understanding of this, and the processes do not help.
I was surprised that pre-sentence reports are not more widely used. This is partly a matter of capacity and of saving court time, and because the short-format reports are insufficiently detailed and there are varied views of their purpose, and some misconceptions—of course, these are all connected. One ex-offender saw PSRs as probation’s advice to the court on the sentence and was emphatic that the court did what probation told it. PSRs can give offenders the opportunity to consent to treatment and give sentencers confidence to impose treatment requirements. The MoJ was encouraging about increasing the number of PSRs. Again, can the Minister update us on the feasibility of adopting the new model?
The Probation Service is central, but it is an unattractive profession with unmanageable caseloads—I hesitated before writing that, but it was the evidence we received. We were well aware of the impact, still felt, of the reorganisation of a decade or so ago, and, if we were not, many witnesses would have made sure that we were. But we were clear that there should be no large-scale restructuring in the next few years. The reunification of 2021 must be allowed to settle down.
We got the logic of recruitment in waves so that experienced staff were in post to support the next intake. But the best may be the enemy of the good. Is the MoJ confident that there are so many potential recruits out there? The Secretary of State mentioned the recruitment drive. The current chief inspector applies the term “not sustainable” to the current position and suggested that capacity should be freed up by probation officers no longer being required to monitor people released after short sentences. If that is not directly relevant to community sentences, it is on the same page, and the Minister may wish to comment.
The previous chief inspector talked of the role having evolved to focus more on supervision and administration: more “assess, protect and change”—its current tag line—than “advise, assist and befriend” offenders, which is the statutory duty under the 1907 Act. The relationship between an offender and his probation officer is crucial. The ex-offenders—I stress “ex”—we met were impressive not only in demonstrating their successes but in explaining obstacles along the way. So were the treatment providers—the relationship with them is also central.
Smaller providers feel squeezed out by big national organisations and excluded by the complex commissioning process. This must be very recognisable to anyone who has dealt with contract bids by voluntary organisations and procurement by local authorities, so I hope that the Government’s promise to simplify the process at local government level will not stop there. There is a lot of enthusiasm, energy and expertise in the third sector, but providers feel unappreciated, given the obstacles in the way of applying it. The Government recognise this, but I did not take from our work that the benefits of changes had filtered down to service level. The Government referred to the dedicated grants probation portal to support the smaller bodies. How is that going?
Both the Probation Service and the courts need to be aware of what services, including treatments, are available—crucially, available in the local area—and make the most of them. Referrals must contain sufficient information and risk assessments, and commissioned partners must be able to feed back information. Data sharing is less than optimal, and there are still misapprehensions about restrictions: “We can’t—GDPR”. Smooth commissioning, allowing flexibility so that partners can innovate, would be of wide benefit, including to the taxpayer.
The stereotype of unpaid work by offenders is unfortunate. Both the public and offenders should see the work as having an intrinsic value. There are good models of support for offenders. I will not let this moment go by without plaudits for so much of what goes on in women’s services, and a plea for funding—I describe it as investment—for its expansion.
Youth services have much more bandwidth than adult services, though I am of course aware of the recent report about Feltham. Staff remain in post for long periods, caseloads are manageable and there is scope for thoughtful actions such as addressing communication needs—reading and writing. We heard persuasive views about the cliff edge at 18 and suggestions of extending “youth” to 21 or higher. This is not a new point, as understanding of a young person’s development is increasing. I would be anxious, though, that standards in youth justice services might drop if there was a handover of young adults without more.
I end with a particular, and perhaps more recent, concern. In the light of the size of the prison population, the demands of post-release supervision must not mean that we lose sight of the lowest level offenders.
I hope that the committee’s report and its work will be useful to the Government. When we spoke earlier this week, the Minister said he thought that, at so many points, trust was the issue. I absolutely agree. I welcome his commitment and what I would describe as hard-headed practicality. It is a very positive mix. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I do not want to detain the House unduly so I will not go through every point that has been made and every speaker by name.
Public perception is hugely important, as is supporting public servants. We have heard some interesting perspectives, including from the two speakers in the gap; I am glad that they made it at the last minute. The word “intensive” has been used quite a lot; it is very appropriate to so much of what we have been talking about.
This has been an afternoon well spent. Today’s debate was arranged at the last minute. I mention this because those who follow our proceedings should not think that a shortish speakers’ list indicates anything other than that Parliament was to have been in recess by now. So many colleagues were committed elsewhere. The current chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath, is particularly sorry not to have been here. So, my thanks go to the speakers—including, of course, the Minister. I wonder: does he know whether there is a chocolate tag—I could do with one of those—not just for what noble Lords have said so very thoughtfully but for actually being here and making points that I was not able to cover because I had to cover the report? It is rather frustrating not to be able to go off on a riff of your own in this sort of debate.
I really appreciate the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, being here because I am sure that he has plenty to do. His listening to this is well taken.
My thanks go to the committee and our hard-working staff: the clerks, David Shiels and Sabrina Asghar; the policy analyst, Achille Versaevel; the press and media officer, Aneela Mahmood; Amanda McGrath, our amazingly efficient committee operations officer; and Gemma Birkett, the specialist adviser. I thank our hosts at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for our visit, as well as the MoJ officials throughout my chairmanship of the committee; we really appreciated their engagement.
My particular thanks go to our many witnesses—those who put in written material and those who came and gave compelling and vivid evidence. I am happy to badge that as evidence in the context of the evaluation of measures.
Victims and Prisoners Bill
Baroness Hamwee ExcerptsFriday 24th May 2024
(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Brinton will respond to most of these items. I cannot resist wondering whether she will comment on whether it is inappropriate to rush towards the duty of candour given the history of the item, but I want to speak particularly to Motion E regarding data sharing for immigration purposes. This amendment has an unhappy history: we have never succeeded before, and I know we will not succeed today—as I say that, I look at the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, in whose name the amendment was tabled to this Bill.
The threat comes from abusers, often domestic abusers, but other abusers as well. In saying to someone who has immigration status that they are illegal, it is irrelevant that that is inaccurate: the abuser provokes fear, and this trumps everything in the mind of the person who is affected. Sadly, for some people, this amendment would be highly “appropriate”, picking up the words in the Commons reason, and the circumstances are immigration control. But for the Home Office, immigration control, even if this amendment is not really about immigration control, trumps everything. The Home Office has previously resisted attempts to control data sharing, so this is no surprise, but we will not pursue it today.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, it seems only 24 hours ago that we were discussing these amendments. Indeed, we were. There has been some progress made, for which we thank the Government from these Benches. It may not meet everything that we were seeking, but there has been some clarity on some of the issues.
On Amendment 33—the training support and the alternative offer from the Government—the reason that those of us who supported it really wanted to see it is the lack of consistency in training between police forces and other parts of the criminal justice system. Although the Minister says that is expensive, it is also very expensive when mistakes are made because the training has not been adequate. We put on notice that this is yet another of the items that will, I suspect, appear as amendments in the future.
I completely support everything my noble friend Lady Hamwee has said on the immigration firewall, and I will not add any more to that. The review of the duty of candour for major incidents is welcome, given that the Government would not agree to Labour’s amendment on it. I hope the review will look at not just major incidents but the duty of candour widely in the public sector, because I am not sure, for example, that the infected blood scandal would have appeared as a major incident for perhaps a decade, or two decades, or even longer. I hope those involved with that committee will look at that, but we welcome the review.
On the MAPPA points, I think that is a helpful amendment, and I can understand why it has been laid. From these Benches, we would like to see it in operation to make sure that it works.
The final point I want to come to is on the Government’s own amendment to the eligibility for home detention curfews. I am very pleased that the Minister specifically mentioned that those convicted of stalking, even with sentences of under four years, will not be able to access home detention curfew. We spent some considerable time during the passage of the Bill also discussing why it is often the case that the CPS charges people with things other than stalking. Those people who are known to be stalkers, but are convicted of a lesser crime, still pose the same risk, particularly when they have been multiple offenders. We urge the Government from these Benches to make sure that the CPS looks at charging stalking and a lesser offence because we believe that that is a problem for many of the things that have been progressed during the passage of the Bill.
I will say very briefly that I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for her help as the Victims’ Commissioner, and to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the London Victims’ Commissioner —who is in the Gallery today—and all their teams. They have briefed your Lordships’ House to help the progress of this Bill. The London Victims’ Commissioner and I were remembering that it was 14 years ago that the stalking inquiry report was published, and much but not all of that has been enacted. I hope that future Governments will make sure that we can better resolve stalking cases in the future.