Sentencing Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the expert contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed Amendment 89 and I would say that that judicial time, if it is necessary, needs to be allocated. Society and the Government have a responsibility to people whom we have put in this impossible situation to find a way out and that amendment implements the Justice Committee’s recommendations.

It is a great pleasure to follow all the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate thus far, many of whom are veterans, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, in trying to sort out this mess. I did not speak on this group at Second Reading and I apologise for that. However, as I said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed Amendment 89. She very much regrets that she has to be somewhere else at the moment and so your Lordships’ House gets me instead. I did speak on the issue of IPP prisoners at Second Reading of the Victims and Prisoners Bill in 2023. I said then that it was an extremely knotty and long-running problem. That is what we have heard and what has been reflected here.

However, we can see from that debate in 2023 and today the power and force of the contributions. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, someone perhaps not usually given to such language, spoke about “blood on our hands”. The noble Lord, Lord Woodley, spoke about “creating gulags”. We abolished this sentence in 2021 because it was wrong, yet the people subjected to it are living with its consequences every day and we have a responsibility to sort this out. There is also the practical point that, if the Government want to reduce the prison population, here is a group who should be at the forefront of looking at how to do that. Instead, far too many of them are in prisons that are wholly unsuited to their progression—30%, according to the latest figures. We cannot claim to be serious about reducing the prison population while leaving this situation to fester. There are other amendments in this group that take us some way forward, but Amendment 89 is the best one. This is the bare minimum of justice for a relatively small group of people who were handed a sentence that Parliament has already acknowledged was a mistake.

I will make one final reflection. What is behind this tragedy is a reflex that we have seen from far too many politicians over far too many years. Under pressure, the reaction is, “Lock ‘em up” or “Lock ‘em up for longer”. That is a reflex that we cannot allow to run loose in future.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will say a brief word and apologise that I have another commitment in 15 minutes, so may not hear the Minister.

I back up what all speakers have said this afternoon—in particular the passionate and convincing words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. We all believe that the Minister’s heart is in the right place and we need to encourage him to go back to anyone who is putting constraints on what he can do and ask them to read the speeches from this afternoon. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, the state has recognised other cases—the Post Office Horizon scandal, infected blood, to some extent Hillsborough, and others—where it has created a major injustice and has tried to make up for those miscarriages. This is not a technical issue, it is an ethical issue, and we are all begging the Minister to deliver the justice that has been called for from all sides of the House this afternoon.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, put his finger on something very important when he said to us that we must be careful about giving hope and then dashing it. But without hope, what is there? That is the point the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, made and it is why I say that I have rarely sat in this Chamber and listened to such powerful speeches.

I was very happy to hear once again that the Minister welcomes this, because he is so involved with rehabilitation. The problem for a lot of these people is that there is no rehabilitation, and that is why we really have to act now.

I am not going to recap everything I said at Second Reading, but I will pick up one point. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, who spared some time to talk to me about joint enterprise, which in some ways is connected to this. I have had a further discussion with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who has more ideas that I hope the Minister might be prepared to hear.