Sentencing Bill

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 45A in the place of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who, regrettably, is not able to be here today. It seems that in wider society there is a greater push for harsher punishment and longer sentences, and there is a tension with what the purpose of such punishment is. This amendment is designed to provide some elucidation on that. It would define in law the purposes of imprisonment and require the courts and the Secretary of State to have regard to the purposes of imprisonment.

His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s strategic objective is to

“carry out sentences given by the courts, in custody and the community, and rehabilitate people in our care through education and employment”.

But there is no statutory or other provision that directly addresses the fundamental purposes of imprisonment. While the Bill sets out the statutory purposes of sentencing, these do not provide guidance to judges on whether imprisonment is appropriate, nor on what should occur once an offender is incarcerated. The need to confront this, we suggest, is quite urgent. There is tension, obviously, between punishment, rehabilitation and restoration.

In the absence of a clear understanding of the purpose of imprisonment, it seems important both for prisoners and their wider families and community, as well as victims, that the expectations of what the particular punishment sets out to do are clear, rather than just handing out a prison sentence and hoping that something good will happen. I should also add that, in my own experience of prisons and talking to people engaged in prison rehabilitation, the resources to enable such rehabilitation to happen—such as education and so on—are reducing, and this cannot be good.

At present, the public express little confidence in the courts and prisons, in part as a result of the lack of clarity around the purpose and use of imprisonment. A clear parliamentary statement on this issue would serve prisoners, who would better understand why they have been imprisoned. This is about clarity. A number of jurisdictions, such as New Zealand, have legislated guidance for courts and the community more broadly regarding this issue. On behalf of those who have signed up to this amendment, I say that this is an amendment that could be taken seriously and would help the judicial system.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, we on these Benches fully support the principle that victims’ rights, safety and experiences must be considered. Included already in the statutory purposes of sentencing is the protection of the public. In practice, courts make an effort to take victims’ interests into account. The explicit addition to Clause 4 raises an interesting principle, and the amendment serves, perhaps, as a useful reminder of the centrality of victims in our justice system. We look forward to hearing the Government’s response to Amendment 45.

Amendment 45A, in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, would place in statute the purposes of imprisonment and require both the courts and the Secretary of State to have regard to them. The first of these principles is

“the incapacitation of prisoners in order to restrict their ability to re-offend in the community”.

I simply observe that the purposes of Clauses 1 and 2 of the Bill are to the opposite effect. They raise presumptions in favour of the release of prisoners into the community, rather than their incapacitation to restrict their ability to reoffend. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to that.

I note that Amendment 45A would reinforce principles already central to sentencing and prison policy, which can only be good for public confidence. If it can lead to improvements in rehabilitation and public protection, then all to the good. Again, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reflections on the four aims proposed in Amendment 45A.

Trials: Timeliness

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. It is an interesting point. For example, the delays are much worse in central London than they are in Wales. There can be all kinds of reasons for that. I have already said that a trial, as the noble Lord knows, is a complicated factor. There are difficulties because you cannot just, for example, ship cases out to somewhere else; we cannot send a whole lot of London’s cases out to Cardiff because of the effect on victims, witnesses and defendants and the movement around of people within the prison estate. But it is important to look to see where lessons can be learned from other parts of the country and to see whether they are doing things that could be imported to other parts of the country so that we can do better there.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, the Minister has said a couple of times that the response to the Leveson recommendations will be delivered in due course. Can she possibly tell us what “in due course” looks like, because it has been quite a long time already?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

That is another good question, as one would expect. The right reverend Prelate would not expect me to give a precise date, and I cannot. I am sure that noble Lords will understand that the recommendations made by Sir Brian Leveson, to whom we are extremely grateful, are robust and far reaching. They will have a potentially radical effect on our justice system as we know it, and it is right that the Government take time to consider them and make sure that there are no unexpected effects on other parts of the system—for example, on the prison estate. If more people are sent to prison, can the prison estate cope with it? For that reason, impact assessments are being undertaken, and we will respond as soon as we are sure that what we are recommending will actually work.

Non-Consensual Sexually Explicit Images and Videos (Offences) Bill [HL]

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, on bringing forward this Bill, which seems to me to be very clear. It was good to witness her evident surprise at having to explain it to a bishop, but she need not have worried on that front.

I do not really understand why the Government, despite making it a manifesto commitment, are not prepared to support the Bill. I support it for three very simple reasons. It is written as seen through the eyes of victims and survivors, which is an essential orientation in framing it. It removes motivation as a test, because the fact that these images exist is enough, and motivation is always subjective and can be argued over for ever. It also restores power to the subject of the images rather than to the taker, which seems to me to be fairly essential.

I want to introduce another element that underlies all this, which might be picked up as this proceeds. Human beings are not commodities. I know that it sounds terribly Marxist to talk about the reification or commodification of people, but we are not commodities. It seems to me that women suffer commodification, whereby stuff can be traded without their consent, in any way that a producer desires. This is dehumanising.

We often hear that we need to better educate boys and men. As I observed to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, having read the minutes of the Wannsee Conference again recently, 12 out of 15 of the people who devised the final solution in Nazi Germany had earned doctorates. Education does not guarantee virtue. That is why we need legislation.

I wholeheartedly support the noble Baroness in this Bill, unless the Government can come up with a way of achieving the same goals in a different form—but it needs to be done quickly.