Sentencing Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, I largely welcome what the Government are attempting with this Bill. I wish the Minister involved all the luck in the world, because this is a tough nut to crack. I believe he approaches it from the right point of view, with real passion, understanding and a focus on rehabilitation. When I come to my comments, I need him to take them in that spirit. I associate myself with the comments made about Baroness Newlove; she will be sorely missed. She was warm and welcoming, and a champion for the victim.

Before I go into my comments, I want to address some sentiments that I am picking up in the Chamber today. I have been in youth and community work for over 35 years now, and there seems to be a notion that criminals are victims. I caution the Minister about talking to communities, particularly poor communities, as if criminals are victims, because a poor community will have had all the challenges that those criminals have had but displayed none of that behaviour. If he is at home asking himself, “Why are the public so mean when it comes to rehabilitation or punishment?”, it is for the poor communities. They have had all those troubles and behaved the way they did—properly—but do not seem to be receiving the same support as criminals. I just want him to bear that in mind; it is very important.

My own youth and community work focused for a long time on gang work, which is why I say that we really need a strategy on tagging or electronic monitoring, whatever you want to call it. When you talk about county lines, tagging could be a vital tool in keeping some young children safe. Many years ago, I joined my local gang to break it up, and I wore a tag to see what that experience was like. I showed it to the young people who I was with, and they scattered. Then one 13 year-old boy came back to me in the morning and said something so profound that I have never forgotten it. He said: “Crime needs privacy; the tag breaks that privacy”. We really should look at using that tactic, but it has to have some kind of meaningful plan behind it. We cannot just give them out like Smarties.

We have talked about the acceptance of community orders et cetera. There are three sets of people who need to accept them: yes, the public and, yes, parliamentarians and the system, but also the criminals. The single biggest driver of crime is the idea that you have got away with it. If community orders are seen as a soft touch, they can be used as a recruitment tool. I can imagine a conversation where my local recruiter—I will not the colloquial term; it is not polite language—says to young people, “You’re only going to get a community sentence, so don’t worry about it”. It is very important to make sure that criminals see it as an imposition, not just to make the luvvies in comfortable parts of the country feel good about it.

Before I go on to some other comments, I want to say one more thing about responsibility. I have worked with children who have done some of the most heinous things possible for a person. I have also worked with children, in larger number by far, who have been involved in what I would call anti-social behaviour. The key thing missing from that conversation, not just for children but particularly for adults, is “responsibility”. In the Minister’s own work, he and his family have given people an opportunity to take responsibility. That has to be part of the conversation we have with people, particularly repeat offenders, about their own behaviour. They are acting irresponsibly, against their own best wishes and against their community. If that is not part of the conversation, we will never convince the public that we are doing the right thing by trying to rehabilitate people and not just punish them.

Regrettably, here in London we have had a huge rise in crime. Overall, the Met Police’s recording of crime has gone up by almost a third. Knife crime, which I have seen blighting communities—black and white, rich and poor—because of the fear it generates, has gone up by 86% in the capital. Something needs to be done about that. Only 5% of robberies were solved in the capital last year, which generates the idea that lawlessness is what is happening on our streets. That must be nipped in the bud.

I want to talk about tool theft. The theft of tools and expensive farm gear is very important because if you come from a community that is striving, when tools are stolen it sends the idea that those who are trying are fools while those who commit crime are on to something. That is why it is important that tool theft, in particular, and farm equipment theft are really drilled down on. It sends a message about striving, because the antidote to poverty is not welfare but work. The idea that people in your community are trying to work is very important.

I want to talk about shoplifting as well. What shoplifting is doing to communities is sending the idea that there is no consequence from it; you will speak to people who will tell you that. Shop owners have no confidence that the police have the resources or the desire to go after shoplifters. Customer theft losses in this country topped £2.2 billion last year, which is a record amount and has a ripple effect not only for our businesses but in communities.

That is compounded by the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting through this imminent Sentencing Bill, in which short sentences will, in effect, be banned. Technically, that might be incorrect, but I tell the House that on the street, that is how it is read. I have great sympathy for what the Minister is trying to do with short sentences. I dealt with many young people who went to prison; it was basically a college of crime, so they came back with a much better idea of it than the one they left with. But what is the consequence for low-level crime and for shoplifting? That really has to be brought home to the public. I go back to my theme: if we are to convince the public that rehabilitation and dealing with crime in the community are worthwhile things to pursue, things such as shoplifting will have to seem as if they have some kind of consequence. I ask the Minister again: what is the consequence? How will we tell the public that there is a consequence for what many people consider a low-level crime?

The release of criminals part-way through their sentences also poses a significant threat to society. After just over a year, this Government have freed 26,000 criminals. Where are they? Whose houses are they living in? What effect are they having on people’s communities? I do not see them in the new place where I live, but what effect are they having where I come from? We cannot just push these people out into communities. They might not be your communities, but they are mine. It sends the notion that crime is something people have got away with, or that they can commit more crime. We have to look at the effect of putting those people into particular communities. If we were releasing them into Belgravia, that would be one thing—but that is not where we are releasing them to.

The Government’s own impact assessment says that the Bill will reduce demand for prison places by only 7,500. I know that is not a big figure, and I welcome any reduction, but if we are to say to the public that the motivation for the Bill is that we want to reduce demand for prison places, we will have lost before we begin. We need to say to them that the motivation for it is to reduce crime on the street, to make them safer and to cut reoffending—not to free up prison places, because that simply does not wash. If you doubt me, go to your local chip shop or pub and have a conversation. When you bring that up, see what the response is.

In response to the Bill the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, my late noble friend Lady Newlove made this statement:

“Continual adjustments to sentences through emergency release schemes have eroded public confidence … any new sentencing framework must deliver … above all, public safety”.


I agree with that analysis and so will the public. Please can the Minister tell us how he will display to the public that this is a worthwhile thing to pursue?

The other problem, of course, is about the confidence of our police services to carry out their job. Many police officers feel that they are under a witch-hunt and that if they use the powers they have, they will end up losing their job. That is devastating for poor communities, who need the police to act with confidence to keep them safe. That is very important. We are about to lose 1,300 officers across the country; here in London, we are about to lose 2,000 police officers and police staff. That could have a detrimental effect on the Metropolitan Police’s ability to police the capital. It is important that the Bill addresses issues around the finances and resources that the police have just to carry this out in the first place.

I end on this notion—I want to go back to it for the Minister. The single biggest driver of crime is the idea that people will get away with it. Whatever we decide in this House, we must send a strong message that they are not getting away with it. We are rehabilitating the system that deals with them, but they are not getting away with it. If the Government miss that trick, we will just be right back to where we were in the beginning.