Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 9th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I speak to the six amendments in my name in this group. I do not need to explain what they say because they are all replicated by other amendments in the group, so I can be very brief. All these amendments are intended to ensure that a person seeking assistance to end their life first be referred to a registered medical practitioner who specialises in palliative, hospice and other care for the purpose of a full assessment—the operative word being “assessment”, not necessarily treatment. The Bill currently requires merely that a medical practitioner “offer” a referral to a specialist palliative care practitioner. This is inadequate in relation to such critical decisions as choosing whether to live or seek a state-assisted death.

It is important to note that all these amendments are based on evidence. In countries with assisted dying—Oregon has been referred to—experts say that patients who request help to die often change their minds if provided with proper palliative care. Yet the Government’s impact assessment confirms that fewer than half of dying people have input from a specialist palliative care team in the last three months of their life. It seems hard to dispute the case, therefore, for the Bill requiring that persons seeking a state-assisted death be given a full palliative care assessment, with the opportunity to choose to experience modern specialist palliative care at its very best. It is about doing everything humanly possible to keep people alive with as little pain and suffering as possible, and giving priority to life over death wherever possible.

Recalling our debate yesterday about which amendments the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, might be prepared to accept, the amendments in this group are, like the previous group, pivotal to the decision a dying person will have to make if this Bill is enacted. It would save much time on Report if the noble and learned Lord could indicate now whether he can accept one or more of them. The Government would then have a responsibility to ensure that adequate palliative care specialists are available.

I recall, as I did at Second Reading, the wise words of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, who, in answer to an Oral Question in this House on 4 September 2024, said that the Government’s

“commitment is to ensure that any debate on assisted dying … takes place in a broader context of access to high-quality palliative and end-of-life care”.—[Official Report, 4/9/24; col. 1151.]

The amendments in this group would help to ensure that a person at least has a real choice of whether to access that palliative and end-of-life care or whether to seek a state-assisted death.

[Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)]

My Lords, my Amendment 51 and others would require the providers of assisted dying services to ensure that all persons seeking such services have discussed the range of end-of-life options available to them with a palliative care specialist.

The Government and proponents of the Bill have promised that end-of-life care will not suffer in order to accommodate assisted dying. I have significant reservations about whether this would be possible, and I fear a push factor, particularly for those who are vulnerable, those who are without family and, to be absolutely frank, those who are poor and cannot fund their own care. When done right, as we know, palliative care can provide a dignified end of life and alleviate the desire to hasten one’s death. Equitable access to options for end-of-life care must be a cornerstone for this Bill, which is why I have laid these amendments. I want to ensure, as far as humanly possible, that all people have and know that they have equal access to palliative care, to treatments that may extend life and to specialist teams to manage the symptoms and pain and to provide dignity.

This Committee must accept that equal access to these services, as for many public services, is not guaranteed and is rarely delivered. I give just one example, due to time. A Liverpool resident with the terrible asbestos-related mesothelioma cancer can undergo a specialist injection that has a high chance of abolishing the pain, whereas a resident of the Midlands, who may be unfit to travel to Liverpool, simply cannot because there are so few specialists trained to take this work on. Therefore, access is obviously limited.

Clauses 5 and 12 require doctors to have discussions about disease prognosis, treatments and symptomatic alleviation with patients. Clause 5 includes an offer to refer them to a specialist. Although these are important discussions, which must be had, they have to be conducted by somebody properly trained and experienced in such matters. For conditions that are specialist care cases, such as motor neurone disease, most doctors will have minimal involvement in the management of that condition and will likely not have the skills and training to adequately fulfil the duties that the Bill places on them. A specialist referral is absolutely necessary to that ensure patients are able to reach an informed decision about their care with somebody who properly understands the disease, how that disease will progress and what can be put in place to alleviate their distress and pain.

A person seeking assisted dying will be worried about their future, losing their independence and dignity and placing a huge burden on their families. A dedicated palliative care specialist would have the expertise, skill and training to provide the highest level of information and support, tailored to the individual needs of each patient, and have specialist knowledge of the condition that the patient is experiencing. Clause 1 requires that a person

“has a clear, settled and informed wish to end their own life”.

I believe that you can ensure a settled and informed wish and reach an informed decision only after properly exploring all available care and treatment options with dedicated palliative care specialists and having those options available to you. My amendment would therefore create a duty on all people involved in the provision of assisted dying services to ensure that those discussions have occurred, covering care options including symptom management and home care provision.

I welcome the amendments tabled by other colleagues that would ensure a dedicated palliative care assessment is part of the assisted dying process and I believe that my amendment can work alongside theirs. My amendment would also cover consultations with palliative care specialists that occur prior to a person seeking assisted dying, providing they cover the criteria outlined in the amendment. You can reach a clear, informed decision to end your own life only after having the advice and support to truly be able to weigh your options. That guarantee should absolutely be in the Bill.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I express my support for the new clause which has been so ably advocated for by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and to which I and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, have added our names. The purpose behind the new clause achieved very considerable support at Second Reading and in Committee. I will focus primarily on the provisions of proposed new subsection (6E), which I hope meet the primary concerns that have been expressed by the Minister.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, rightly said, it is now widely recognised that the IPP regime is a very serious stain on this country’s reputation for justice. We need to address that. It has been addressed prospectively by legislation but not retrospectively. This new clause gives your Lordships’ House—and thus Parliament—the opportunity to do it in a statutory form. Hitherto, this Government, like the previous Government, have relied on administrative measures. That is not sufficient.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has set out the essential facts. They can also be read and studied in the report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Justice that was published in 2022 and more recently in the report published in June 2025 by the Howard League for Penal Reform. My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, were very distinguished contributors to that report. I will not repeat what has already been said and published. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I will concentrate on the solution.

The proposed new clause reflects the principal recommendation of the Howard League; namely, a two-year conditional release scheme for IPP prisoners. The league’s recommendation, which is incorporated in the new clause, is that in IPP cases the Parole Board should be required to set a date within a two-year window when a prisoner should be released, together—this is important—with what has been done by way of conditions to ensure public safety. The Government’s reaction is not one that I am blind to. It has been to oppose the recommendation on the grounds that it runs the risk of releasing individuals who, in the opinion of the Parole Board, may pose a continuing risk to the public. That is indeed a risk which needs to be addressed. I suggest that it is properly and fully addressed by proposed new subsection (6E).

It is never possible wholly to exclude risk. I have some personal experience of this. Nearly 40 years ago, I was a junior Minister in the Home Office. The then Home Secretary was Lord Hurd of Westwell. I served him for seven years in the Home Office and the Foreign Office. He is one of the most distinguished public servants of the post-war era. Subject to his overarching responsibility, I was responsible for determining the release of inmates from special hospitals. I was also responsible for fixing the tariffs in homicide cases. That, happily, is no longer a task for Ministers. In both instances a risk of repetition of the offence could not be excluded, but unless you wish to incarcerate an individual for life, which in general I regard as unconscionable, you have to take a measure of risk. The task before any Government, any Minister, is to address and mitigate the risk. That is what proposed new subsection (6E) seeks to do.

The subsection is designed to meet the concerns that have been expressed by Ministers, most recently and in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. It would enable the Parole Board, at any time during the currency of a previously made order, to revisit that order, and if the Parole Board deemed it necessary, rescind or vary the provisions of the order or extend its term.

Moreover, and this is perhaps the most important point, the subsection would oblige the Parole Board to reconsider its previous decision if required by the Home Secretary or his Ministers; in other words, the Home Secretary or his Ministers can require reconsideration of any relevant Parole Board decision in respect of which the Home Secretary has concerns. I suggest to your Lordships that this addresses very precisely the concerns that have been previously expressed by Ministers, most notably by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson.

So I suggest that the proposed new clause, containing as it does the important protection afforded by proposed new subsection (6E), addresses what is generally recognised to be a very serious injustice; and it does so in a way that safeguards the public interest. I very much hope that it will command the support of your Lordships’ House and thereafter that of the House of Commons.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I too strongly support the amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. This amendment is the safest, best amendment on IPP prisoners we have seen so far. It would give an IPP prisoner a clear statutory steer as to what they have to do in order to secure release on licence. The prisoner would know that if they fulfil the board’s directions, they will be released on licence. It would give them a clear goal to aim for which does not currently exist.

If, therefore, the prisoner is serious about being released, this would be the best opportunity they have had so far. It would be heavily incumbent on the Prison Service to ensure that the IPP prisoner has access to any purposeful activity or other requirements set out in the Parole Board’s directions. This must be an absolute priority.

Above all, the final decision on whether it is safe to release the prisoner would rest with the Parole Board, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has said. Proposed new subsection (6E) in Amendment 76 is the key provision, which is new and leaves the final decision with the Parole Board. That is what the Government, in resisting resentencing options, have said time and again must be the case: the Parole Board must have the final say. Well, here we are with this amendment, so what possible reason can the Government have for not accepting it? It is not good enough to say it will give IPP prisoners false hope. That is tantamount to saying that some IPP prisoners will never be released. This would be completely unacceptable.

This Government have responsibility for every day an IPP prisoner is detained and the despair that this causes. They must urgently consider every reasonable option for ending this disgraceful situation. This is the most reasonable option yet which is now on the table. It must be tried.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard three excellent speeches in support of this amendment, which was again introduced most powerfully by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, as it was in Committee when he said, if I recall correctly,

“we will have … blood on our hands”.—[Official Report, 3/12/25; cols. 1803-04.]

if we do not do anything about this situation.

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which I am glad to say the Government are still committed to, forbids

“torture or … inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

But surely that is what the Government—the state—are subjecting IPP prisoners to. I would like to hear why the Minister considers that there is no breach of Article 3 in this case.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I am bringing back this amendment on Report as I do not think it was adequately addressed in Committee. Amendment 52, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, 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.

We know that depriving someone of their liberty is an action taken by courts with caution and care. His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s strategic objective is to carry out sentences given by the courts, in custody and in the community, and to rehabilitate people in our care through education and employment. However, there is no statutory or other provision that directly addresses the fundamental purposes of imprisonment. That is what this amendment seeks to achieve. Indeed, if we had this legislative definition, it would actually have brought into focus issues we have been talking about in debates so far. In Committee, the Government disagreed that a definition in statute was needed. The noble Lord, Lord Lemos, stated:

“The purposes of sentencing, including imprisonment, are already set out in statute and reflected in Sentencing Council guidelines”.—[Official Report, 26/11/25; col. 1399.]


I respectfully disagree that the purposes of imprisonment are set out in law in this way.

At present, the public expresses 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 both prisoners and victims well and provide clarity at all levels of decision-making for those involved with and within the criminal justice system. This amendment holds together clarity around the reduction of offending and justice for victims. With this in mind, I beg to move.

Briefly moving to other amendments in this group, I have added my name in support of Amendments 71, 72 and 73, which I know will be well introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. Suffice it to say, I am in full support of the proposal to set up an independent advisory panel on sentencing and reducing reoffending. I am also in full support of Amendment 98 in this group.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief. I support Amendment 52, and I declare my interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust.

Although Section 57 of the Sentencing Act 2020 sets out the purposes of sentencing—namely, punishment, reduction of crime, reform and rehabilitation, protection of the public, and reparation—it does not provide guidance to judges on whether imprisonment is the appropriate sentence, nor on what should occur once an offender is in prison. This lack of guidance on the purpose of imprisonment is all the more damaging in the light of the greater push for longer and longer sentences of imprisonment which we have seen over the last 30 years.

In rejecting this amendment in Committee, the Minister said:

“The purposes of sentencing, including imprisonment, are already set out in statute and … in Sentencing Council guidelines”.—[Official Report, 26/11/25; col. 1399.]


With respect, Section 57 of the 2020 Act does not mention imprisonment at all. By contrast, the amendment we are debating is focused entirely on the purpose of imprisonment, so as to give the sentencing judge guidance on whether that is the appropriate sentence among the different sentencing options available.

In addition, and importantly, this amendment would indicate what should occur once the offender is in prison so as to fulfil the statutory purpose of imprisonment. There is currently a major gap in our legislation addressing that critical issue. This helps to explain the shameful statistic that 80% of offending is reoffending. The amendment would chime with the rest of this excellent Bill in helping to reduce that reoffending rate as regards those released from prison, since they would have benefited from clear statutory purposes behind their sentence of imprisonment, and in turn would have benefited from a corresponding obligation on the Secretary of State to deliver treatment regimes in prison consistent with these new statutory purposes of imprisonment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 64 and 66, and I thank my noble friend Lord Hailsham for his Amendments 65 and 67. Although my amendments would apply only to new sentences, because that is the scope of the Bill, I am content with my noble friend’s amendments because, disappointingly, as we heard in Committee from the noble Lords, Lord Bach and Lord Carter of Haslemere, and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie, the capacity and staffing crisis in prisons is such that access to education and training is severely limited. Indeed, as we were told, the Justice Committee’s 2025 report found that roughly half of all prisons are not now engaged in education or employment programmes. It is therefore fair to provide that a breach of the condition I proposed bites only if the relevant purposeful activity is available.

We have a tragic situation. At the end of 2024, there were 87,919 people in prison, and the numbers receiving education were closer to 50,000 on most metrics. Something must be done so that we make use of the time that a prison spell provides to give more offenders the skills they need to return to employment and to avoid the temptation to return to crime, and probably to prison. The Prison Reform Trust—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, who I know has a role there —agrees. I have been struck by the support for action to deal with the concerns I have raised—and among people who might not normally warm to me.

To cap it all, the chair of the independent monitoring boards took time, amid the Christmas break, to write to the Minister to raise concern about cuts in real terms in prison education budgets. It is particularly worrying that courses, especially vocational courses, have been or will be curtailed dramatically across all categories of prison. These are the courses that provide a route to steady employment after release. The IMBs say that cuts affect prisons in all regions and across all functions and performance levels. This is despite prison rules dictating that prisoners, other than those on remand, are required to work or take part in training or education if physically and mentally able to do so. That is what most voters want to see, though I wonder whether the caveat carve-out is not too broad and allows too many prisoners to bury their heads and avoid purposeful activity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 74 and 75, in my name, concern exemptions to the Government’s so-called earned progression model. We do not oppose in principle the idea that prisoners who demonstrate genuine rehabilitation should be eligible for early release. Where offenders have taken meaningful steps to address their behaviour and reduce their risk, there is a case to be made for earned progression. However, Clause 20 does not deliver that outcome.

Throughout Second Reading and in Committee, the Minister referred to an earned progression model and to examples such as that in the Texas system, yet, as drafted, Clause 20 contains no such mechanism. As the House of Commons Library briefing makes clear, the release point is automatic rather than earned. Prisoners will be released at the one-third point of their sentence unless additional days have been imposed by a court for misconduct. That is not earned progression; it is default release. Barring significant further transgressions, release is determined by the passage of time alone.

The Lord Chancellor has sought to reassure the public by stating that the most serious offences are excluded, yet the Ministry of Justice’s own data confirms that offenders convicted of rape, grievous bodily harm and the creation of indecent images of children will be eligible for this automatic scheme. If those offences do not qualify as serious, it is difficult to understand what offences would.

This is not a technical adjustment to sentencing mechanics; it is a profound change to how the state responds to some of the gravest crimes. As drafted, the Bill would reduce custodial time for over 60% of rapists and more than 80% of child sex offenders. It would permit those convicted of stalking, an offence which we know is strongly associated with escalation into homicide, to be released automatically after serving just one-third of their sentence, without any assessment of ongoing risk.

Amendment 74 would exclude from these provisions those convicted of a range of serious offences, including offences involving the death of a vulnerable person. Amendment 75 would require consultation to ensure that other serious offence categories are appropriately excluded before these measures come into force. In the other place, a similar amendment which included an even broader list of exemptions attracted support from all parties. All 65 Liberal Democrat MPs present for the Division voted in favour of the amendment. Other parties in support of the amendment included the Green Party, the independents, Plaid Cymru, Reform and indeed some members of the Government. It is rare to have such cross-party unanimity, but Members in the other place clearly recognised the dangers that Clause 20 poses to the public.

Noble Lords may notice that Amendment 87, from the Liberal Democrats, includes the same list of offences, as well as two further categories of offences, which should, they suppose, be exempt from automatic release following fixed-term recall. I call on noble Lords to consider consistency here, as much as concern.

Clause 20 applies to a far more serious cohort of offenders than other provisions in the Bill, and clearly there is concern beyond this Chamber. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner has described the early release of perpetrators after weeks in custody as “simply unacceptable”. The Victims’ Commissioner has warned that victims will be left “unnerved and bewildered”. These are not political voices but independent authorities concerned about public safety.

Public confidence is often regarded as fragile where the justice system is concerned. When victims see those who have harmed them released automatically after a fraction of their sentence, trust is bound to be eroded. Amendment 74, in particular, would be a proportionate safeguard to ensure that early release is not applied to those whose crimes are too serious and too dangerous to justify it. If the Government are not prepared to give an assurance with regard to Amendment 74, I will seek to test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 90 in this group, which would insert a proposed new clause on extended determinate sentence prisoners, who I will refer to as EDS prisoners.

Currently, the majority of people serving an EDS first become eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of their custodial term and every two years thereafter, with eventual automatic release at the end of the custodial term on extended licence if they are unsuccessful in gaining parole earlier. This proposed new clause would create a power for the Secretary of State to refer to the Parole Board a prisoner serving an EDS at the earlier halfway point of the sentence, instead of the two-thirds point, if the Secretary of State is of the view that there is a reasonable prospect that the board will direct release. It is therefore in line with recommendation 4.2 of the sentencing review. As that review affirmed, this measure would improve incentives for rehabilitation and enhance the effectiveness of measures to address the overcrowding crisis, without in any way changing the public protection mechanisms that currently apply to EDS prisoners.

The Minister said in Committee, at col. 1842 of Hansard, on 3 December last year, that the Government rejected the independent review’s recommendation 4.2 on the grounds that the EDS was imposed because the offender was considered dangerous. It is quite right that an EDS is a public protection sentence, but, in statute, the parts intended to fulfil its public protection function are the involvement of the Parole Board and the extended licence period. There are no public protection concerns in statute to justify referral to the Parole Board at the two-thirds point of the sentence instead of the halfway point, as is proposed for most other determinate sentence prisoners.

Under the provisions of this new clause, and in line with the recommendations of the review, the Parole Board would still engage in exactly the same careful, reasoned and deliberate decision-making process at the 50% point as it currently does at the 66% point. Moreover, the average length of an EDS is nine years, with many serving far longer than that. It is therefore a serious oversight that, for no good reason, measures to address overcrowding are ignoring EDS prisoners, who constitute 10% of people in prison. That is more than 9,000 people, who are serving an average of nearly a decade.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, when I became a practitioner at the Bar as a young woman in the late 1970s, freedom of expression was regularly used as the excuse to justify sometimes horrific porn. When there were discussions about this among lawyers, it was almost invariably said that women were being prudish and did not understand that erotica—that was always the word used, rather than pornography—was rather benign and had no effect on behaviour.

It has taken decades for that viewpoint to be challenged and research to be done to show the links between behaviours and exposure to extreme pornography—not that it has to be that extreme. Young women at the Bar tell me now that almost invariably when the computers of people who are brought to court for allegations of rape and sexual violations of all kinds are examined, they are full of pornography. The link between pornography and serious violation of women is now well established.

It is not about benign erotica. We are talking about the ways in which we have added to the menu of possibilities, often giving guidance to young men on how to perform sexually—in a way that does not involve any kind of tenderness and intimacy but is about objectifying women’s bodies and dealing with them in ways that are abusive, not hearing resistance or “no”, and never finding out whether something is acceptable.

The last time I wrote a book about the law was very interesting. This was 2018, and it was then republished a few years later after the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The book was being put on to audio, as nowadays happens, and I was doing the reading myself. A young woman was the technician in the sound lab where this was being done. There was a piece of the book about pornography, the way in which it was impacting on sexual offending and the serious influence that it brings to bear on the behaviour of many of the men who were coming before the courts.

She said to me, “I watch pornography every single day”, and I asked why. She said, “Because I wanted to know how to do sex—I wanted to know how it was done—but I’ve now become addicted to it”. It had replaced for her the possibility of having real sexual relationships. It was her confiding, in a sort of confessional box way, and saying, “What can I do about it to change my life? I find that it’s the only thing that can give me relief”. It was quite a shock to me as someone who thinks they know most things that happen under the human condition’s spread of behaviours. Here was this young woman, probably only about 18, describing how she was now addicted and how she had come to do it because boys felt that she was no good when it came to sexual behaviour.

I just want to say why I readily support the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, to whom I pay tribute. Over the years I have been exposed to pornography because it was part of the evidence in cases that I was doing. In war crimes, increasingly, there is on the phones of young soldiers all across the world a high level of pornography, and it leads to really vile and terrible abuses of women in conflict. For looking at the stuff that she has had to look at and the experience that she has had to bear, I really feel that we owe the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. People do not realise the toll that can take on somebody.

I was in chambers with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the famous writer Sir John Mortimer, who wrote the Rumpole series. John Mortimer was a great believer in freedom of expression, and he had done a number of cases around literature and freedom of expression in rather explicit novels. He then was pursued by the porn industry and offered great sums of money if he would act in porn cases, which on occasions he did. He said he used to take his glasses off because it was the only way he could live with looking at the stuff he was having to watch.

We were all offered the opportunity of inheriting his porn practice when he left the Bar, and I have to tell noble Lords that none of us was very interested in doing it because of the toll it takes on the human imagination. You want a mind that is not contaminated by this stuff in your expressions of love and intimacy, and men at the Bar who are doing this stuff say that there are times when they cannot dismiss it. We have to learn from the reality of this. This is poison; it poisons our children, and it is probably poisoning many of the menfolk who sit in this House. We have to find ways of dealing with it—it is going to be difficult.

I have supported the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, including the one on the mimicking of children. I can tell noble Lords very clearly that that is a real problem that we have currently. There is the business of depicting incest and the poison that it brings into households and so on. We discussed it only last week, and it disturbed so many people when the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, described bots now doing that and the seeming inability to prosecute because it is not a human who is at the other end of it. Then there is business of not verifying age adequately. These are serious problems that we have.

One of the things that is inhibiting the response of jurisdictions, and I think ours might be one of them, is that we are concerned not to lose the confidence of the tech bros who are the billionaires making so much money out of many of the ways in which new technology exploits this and makes an incredible amount of money out of it.

One of the great Trumpian boasts is that our world should not be inhibited by regulation, but there are some areas where we need regulation and this is most definitely one of them. All of us need to come together and not feel that we should be obeisant to the American way.

I urge the Government, as sometimes happens with Governments of all complexions, not to make this an example of resistance to amendments that have been promoted largely by the other side. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has the support of women from around this Committee and from men. I ask the Government please to listen to these submissions; they are made because of the real detriment to our society and quality of life that is created by virtue of this stuff.

Not very long ago, I did a report for Scotland on sexual harassment in the street and the public square. It was very clear that disinhibition online leads to disinhibition in other places and in the public square. It is why young women out for an evening are suddenly abused by men coming out of pubs, asking to have sex with them and talking about the size of their breasts or their behinds, and speaking to women in the most revolting way. The women were saying, “I go home feeling degraded. I feel that I do not have the equality and dignity that are promised to me in this new world in which we like to imagine that men and women will be treated as well as each other”.

I urge the Committee to go with Amendment 314 on the parity of pornography online and offline, because we have to start regulating this stuff. If we do not do it soon, we will pay an incredible price.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I heartily support Amendment 314 and the others in this group. It is shocking that there is a disparity in the ways that online pornography and offline pornography are regulated. It rather makes a mockery of regulation in the offline sector, since anyone can circumvent it by watching material online that is banned offline.

As we have heard, material that is prohibited offline is prolific online. This includes content that depicts and/or promotes child sexual abuse, incest and harmful sexual acts such as sexual strangulation. The fact that the existing offline system of regulation has not been applied to the online world is a symptom of legislation not keeping pace with technological advances in the online world. Now is a golden opportunity to put that right.

Mainstream pornography sites host a vast amount of harmful content. Not only is that an inducement to participate in serious criminal activity but young people—boys and young men in particular—who access it are growing up with a totally warped view of what constitutes a normal, loving relationship. This surely risks seriously damaging their prospects of forming long and meaningful relationships in the future. We owe it to our younger generation to put this right and protect them from this horrific material.

Why on earth is access to such material not regulated effectively when exactly the same content offline is? It shows a naivety about the content and extent of damaging online material and the ease with which young and easily influenced minds can access it. It is shameful that there is no effective regulation of the age at which such material can be accessed. It needs to be put right urgently, and I urge the Government to seize this opportunity and accept Amendments 292 and 314 and the others in this group. Is there anything that we debate in this Chamber that is more important than protecting our children?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness imagine just how unpopular I would be if I committed to an absolute timeframe? What I can say is that I hope she will take it from me that I regard this as important. The meetings with the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, have started. This matters but we need to get it right.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

Will this review—yet another review—take place before Report? The Bill is before us, so once Report has passed, it will be too late to have the review. This is not something that we can leave until it is too late. Can we at least have an assurance that Report will be timed in a way that enables the Minister to come back and say, “This review has happened, and this is what we’re going to do”?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I entirely understand the sentiments. I cannot commit to that today, but I will take the point away.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, my Amendment 94A touches on an issue that arose in a number of important speeches at Second Reading, particularly one by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. I thank the Prisoners’ Education Trust for its advice with this amendment. It relates to the issue of earned progression, which all noble Lords know is at the very heart of the Government’s worthy intention in this Bill: to restore our criminal justice system so that it can once again, in time, be the envy of the world. The issue is what the earned progression model means, or perhaps ought to mean, now and in the future, and it is one of the few differences in approach between the recommendations of the Independent Sentencing Review, or ISR, and the policy of the Bill we are debating.

The executive summary of the Independent Sentencing Review says at page 10:

“While it is for the Government to decide which of the Review’s recommendations it will accept, the Review considers its recommendations as a holistic package of measures that will work best in conjunction with each other”.


I believe that the Committee will say amen to that. The ISR’s superb report, produced so speedily and clearly, along with the Minister’s own convictions, experience and obvious passion, are the catalysts for these once-in-a-generation, long-overdue changes to our outdated penal system.

It is not unknown for there to be differences in matters like this, even in those of serious importance. Here, though—and this is important to my amendment—there is good will on all sides and in no way is this amendment intended as anything other than a friendly, and hopefully helpful, contribution. It is obviously right when scrutinising the Bill, as is our duty, that these differences be openly debated.

Put simply, at page 57 of its report, the ISR argues:

“The criteria for compliance should include, but not be limited to, compliance with prison rules. Actions which violate prison rules”,


which it then sets out,

“and do not follow lawful instructions by immigration officials in deportation proceedings … would result in the offender’s release point being pushed back”.

It goes on:

“The criteria for compliance should also include the expectation that the offender will engage in purposeful activity and attend any required work, education, treatments and/or training obligations where these are available. This Review holds the view that, as prison capacity eases and fuller regimes become possible, compliance requirements for earned release should become more demanding”.


The Bill, on the other hand, argues that the criteria for maximum early release will be limited to complying with the prison rules. Once those are complied with, the maximum discount will be available. The arguments for the ISR’s stronger criteria are well known and were set out at Second Reading here and, if I may say so, in an excellent speech by my honourable friend Linsey Farnsworth MP at Third Reading on 29 October in another place. I can summarise those arguments. First, there is the danger of too many recalls if no purposeful activity has been undertaken by the offender. Secondly, there is no need for positive effort by the offender, who knows that they will be released if they do nothing wrong. Thirdly, there is the even greater pressure on the Probation Service. These are attractive arguments to me and many others; however, the Government’s response must be listened to. I anticipate that they will not oppose the principle that earned progression should involve something more than obeying prison rules, but that the reality of the present position, bequeathed as it undoubtedly has been, is that for the prison system to function in the near future, it is necessary to ensure that prisons are never put under such pressure of numbers. Thus, the Government propose weaker criteria.

This is an important issue, but people of good will who want this new system to work can see the strength of the arguments on both sides of the case. That is why it is important that a way through be found, both now and in the future.

My amendment suggests that there should be a statutory reminder in the Bill that, in due course, regulations should be introduced to alter the criteria for participation in purposeful activity. Indeed, the Minister in the other place said that the Government would like to go further. There are alternatives to my amendment, and we may hear about them in due course.

I will make two urgent points before I sit down. First, there needs to be an even greater effort, as a matter of urgency, to increase the amount of purposeful activity across the board. I pick out education, which is crucial to any future success. It is rumoured that cuts have been made to the education budget. Can the Minister tell us the truth of the matter on cuts? Secondly, all this argument places extra concentration on the Probation Service. As this Committee has heard time and again, it is at the heart of any success or failure of this brave new scheme, and that should be remembered when we are looking at this issue. I beg to move.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I am going to comment on Amendment 94A tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and then I will present my Amendments 95 and 128. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust.

I very much agree with the spirit of the amendment tabled by noble Lord, which he presented very powerfully. As I said at Second Reading, earned release is a commendable rehabilitative concept, but this Bill, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, just reminded us, allows early release at the one-third point without any real rehabilitation having been earned. A prisoner will earn early release at the one-third point merely by behaviour which avoids additional days for breaches of prison rules such as offences against discipline; threatening, abusive or violent behaviour; or possessing unauthorised articles.

The experience of the Criminal Justice Act 1967 teaches us that release is truly “earned” only if the offender engages in meaningful purposeful activity and attends any required work, education, treatment and/or training obligation, where these are available. Only then can they be said to have taken steps to rehabilitate before their release. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, recognises that the capacity and staffing crisis in prisons is such that access to purposeful activity is severely limited, and that early release cannot currently depend on engagement in purposeful activity. It therefore proposes an enabling power so that, when the time is right and staff capacity issues allow, provision can be made for purposeful activity to be taken into account in deciding early release at the one-third point of the sentence, not least to give prisoners an incentive to undertake purposeful activity which they otherwise would not have.

I previously supported, and indeed suggested, this approach at Second Reading. However, it raises issues of fair and equal treatment of prisoners, and the quality and consistency of the regime available to them. I listened carefully to the debate on Monday on the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, on mandatory purposeful activity for custodial sentences, and it was clear that there are concerns about the impact on prisoners who are unable to take part in many forms of purposeful activity due to learning or physical disabilities, as well as problems with the estate having insufficient resources to provide such opportunities. Amendment 94A therefore has the potential to create unfairness for prisoners who are not offered such opportunities or cannot take them up for reasons beyond their control. However, I am very interested to know the Minister’s view, especially on when this sort of change might be feasible, since it is obviously sensible when resources allow.

I now turn to my Amendments 95 and 128, beginning with Amendment 95. For certain serious violent and sexual offenders, the Bill retains an automatic release point of 66% without an opportunity for earned release at the halfway point. The new clause introduced by Amendment 95 would bring this cohort into the scope of earned release. The Secretary of State would be empowered to exercise his or her discretion, at the 50% point in the sentence, to refer the case to the Parole Board for consideration of release. It thereby gives effect to the recommendation of the ISR that a progression model apply to all prisoners serving a standard determinate sentence.

This amendment and my next one relating to EDS prisoners would not create the same risk of unfairness that I mentioned in relation to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, since the Parole Board would consider a much wider range of factors than purely “purposeful activity”: for example, whether the offender has worked on addiction issues, whether they have addressed their offending behaviour or whether they will be honest with their offender manager, et cetera.

Prisoner Releases in Error

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question, especially referring to victims. Victims always have to come first. I appreciate what a difficult time it must have been for victims and their families knowing that prisoners who they thought were in prison were actually out in the community. Where a victim has a victim liaison officer and is part of the victim contact scheme, they will be engaged in that process. It is important to me that that happens. I refer to my noble friend’s initial comment around the fact that this has been a problem for some time. That is one of the reasons why in my speech I specifically said that I know that the previous Government were trying to improve this. Across government, politicians and civil servants have been trying to improve accuracy and systems. This is something that we need to embrace, but as part of the process, we need to understand that victims come first, and the damage this does to victims is significant.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, as has been said, prisoners have been released in error for decades. I know because I used to advise on sentence calculation in the 1990s in the Home Office legal advisers branch and I was the Prison Service legal adviser. It was difficult then; it is now fiendishly difficult because of all the changes to the statute book that have happened since then, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, knows well, because she was with me at the Home Office.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

The noble Lord was my boss.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

I was indeed. The statute book is a total mess as far as trying to calculate when a release date applies for a particular prisoner. Prisoners are all in a different position. Some have additional days; some have served a different remand time. All these factors need to be taken into account. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, a digital answer has to be the way forward. As the noble Baroness said, it will obviously work here because you can punch in the details of the sentence to work out exactly when the release date is. It will have to be updated, of course, as additional days are added to the sentence and so on. We must go to a digital solution, but how long will it take for that to be up and running? There needs to be a procurement process. These things take ages, and we do not have ages. We have identified a crisis taking place. Is there any estimate of when this will be up and running and functioning to stop these releases?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The digital team that has gone into Wandsworth is confident that it can do some quick fixes. I do not have an exact timeline, but we have given it up to £10 million to do those quick fixes. The nature of digital technology is such that we will be able to roll that out across the prison estate very quickly. One relevant point some noble Lords were discussing with me in your Lordships’ House last night is the Sentencing Bill, which we hope will make things simpler. I also want to touch on the point the noble Lord mentioned about how complicated it is. It is unfair on our hard-working staff to expect them to get this right all the time, especially those who have just started. We need to support them not just with digital solutions but with a lot of training because, even though we are going to simplify things, it will still be a complex process. I hope that the Sentencing Bill will simplify things for everybody involved in the justice system.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I declare an interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust, but I add that my points here are mostly my own. I wholeheartedly support the Government’s ambition to rehabilitate more prisoners so that we move away from the endless cycle of successive Governments ramping up the length of sentences so as to be seen to be tough on crime. For far too long, sentencing law has been focused exclusively on punishment, and insufficient attention has been paid to the other statutory purposes of sentencing, especially reduction in crime and rehabilitation. We all know that 80% of offending is reoffending—a really shocking statistic.

I welcome the recommendations of the sentencing review, and there are many good things in the Bill that build on that review. However, the Bill has not implemented all the recommendations, even though the review considered them to be

“a holistic package of measures that will work best in conjunction with each other”.

Many points could be made but, for the purposes of Second Reading, I will focus on what I consider to be the most important area; namely, the way in which the Bill provides for so-called earned early release at the one-third point of the sentence, and the likely consequences of that. My comments will echo points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and indeed just now by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

Earned release is a commendable rehabilitative concept, which originated in the Criminal Justice Act 1967. That Act provided for Parole Board release for fixed-term prisoners at the one-third point of the sentence, if they had satisfied the board that they had been sufficiently rehabilitated so as to make it safe to release them—but it was a big if. A prisoner could be released on licence, with a two-thirds reduction in time served in prison, only if they could show they had taken steps to rehabilitate. That is not this Bill.

The Bill provides that a prisoner will earn early release at the one-third point merely by behaviour that avoids additional days for breaches of the prison rules; for example, offences against discipline, threatening, abusive or violent behaviour or possessing unauthorised articles. Immediately, one sees the likely adverse consequences of that approach. First, it will lead to a concentration of vulnerable and challenging prisoners within the prison environment. Individuals who struggle with multiple and complex needs, such as mental health, neurodiversity and substance dependence, are most likely to break prison rules and get placed on report and adjudications. Over time, therefore—and we must look at the long term, since this Bill will probably remain the law for years to come—the prison population will comprise a disproportionate number of people who have not accessed early release due to this factor.

Secondly, who will award additional days and on what basis? This becomes a critical issue if early release at the one-third point is to depend on avoiding such adjudications. If it is prison officers, that could clearly be open to abuse. It could also negatively impact on staff-prisoner relationships.

Thirdly, is avoiding additional days for things such as threatening, abusive or violent behaviour so as to gain early release really “earning it” in a meaningful sense? The 1967 Act experience teaches us that release is only truly “earned” if the offender engages in meaningful purposeful activity and attends any required work, education, treatment and/or training obligation where these are available. Only then can they be said to have taken steps to rehabilitate before their release. In an ideal world, therefore, release at the one-third point should not be automatic merely by avoiding punishment. It should be properly earned—as was recommended by the sentencing review—so as to demonstrate that the prisoner is less likely to reoffend or breach licence conditions when in the community and end up being recalled to prison.

I recognise that Clause 20 is partly an emergency mechanism to alleviate current capacity pressures. To provide that release at the one-third point must depend on engagement in purposeful activity might deprive Clause 20 of its utility, since the state of capacity and staffing crisis in prisons are such that access to such activity is severely limited. However, this means that the burden of rehabilitating prisoners will fall exclusively on the Probation Service, which will already be on its knees with the upsurge in community sentences. There is a massive danger that, in trying to create more prison capacity with release at the one-third point, the measure might in fact diminish it because of the number of recalls.

This is not fanciful. Let us take the number of prisoners who were released early last Autumn under the Government’s emergency release scheme SDS40: MoJ figures published on 30 October show that, between April and June, there were more than 11,500 releases under the SDS40 scheme and over 10,000 recalls, which is 15% higher than in the same quarter in 2024 and is a record high. Although some of these recalls may have been unrelated to the scheme, the department acknowledges that the unprecedented increase was likely driven partly by the implementation of SDS40. If there has been such an increase following release at the 40% point, how much worse might it be if prisoners are released at the one-third point under this Bill? Meaningful purposeful activity in prison before release would surely have reduced the number of such recalls.

But I recognise that the Government are between a rock and a hard place on this: on the one hand, they need to release more prisoners early so as to create more capacity and, on the other, they risk putting so much pressure on the Probation Service that a large number of released prisoners will be recalled to prison, thereby defeating the whole point of Clause 20. I do not know the answer to this in the short term, which must surely depend partly on a vast injection of new probation resources, the like of which we have never seen. Even then, you cannot wave a magic wand to produce overnight significantly more trained probation officers with the experience to deal with the increased burden. Whatever the answer in the short term, it still leaves the long-term problem of how purposeful activity in prison can, at some future point when capacity issues have subsided, be made a requirement before release at the one-third point. Otherwise, prisoners will have no incentive to participate in such activity, since Clause 20 will guarantee their release at the one-third point anyway.

Something needs to be done now, since otherwise Clause 20 will continue, unless amended by a future Bill, to require release at the one-third point irrespective of whether prisoners have taken steps to rehabilitate. The burden of rehabilitating prisoners would then, for the foreseeable future, fall exclusively on the Probation Service. One suggestion, so as to build some flexibility into the system now, would be to insert an enabling power in Clause 20 for regulations to be made which, at a future point, when capacity and resources allow, would enable Clause 20 to be modified so as to incorporate a requirement for purposeful activity. This would give the department the option of modifying Clause 20 in the future without the need for a fresh Bill. It would keep the options open, which is never a bad idea where prisons and probation are concerned.

Interpreting Services in the Courts (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, we have heard some powerful speeches from distinguished and knowledgeable speakers this evening. I am very conscious that, like the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, I come to this debate relatively new. However, I have one ace in my pack. I have been briefed in detail by an expert who has worked at the coalface of our criminal justice system for 25 years as an interpreter in French and Italian: indeed, she was a witness to the committee, and I am delighted to say that she is with us in the Room today.

Let us remind ourselves of the importance of what we are discussing. Ensuring the fairness of criminal proceedings has always been accepted as paramount, and interpretation services are a core part of that. Even the otherwise skeletal provisions of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights state that fairness requires that everyone charged with a criminal offence should

“have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in court”.

That is hardly surprising, since what can be more important than a defendant being able to understand the case against him or her in a language they speak?

However, the committee’s report shows that the current provision of interpreting services in the courts has broken down and presents a significant risk to the administration of justice. It causes delays to cases, results in defendants being detained beyond what is necessary and, ultimately, risks miscarriages of justice. Yet, unlike the backlogs in our courts, with delays in rape trials, et cetera, the problems besetting our interpretation services have been largely invisible, with little or no publicity—that is, until the committee’s truly excellent report.

The crux of the problem is the way in which the current outsourcing of these services is totally failing to deliver for interpreters and, therefore, for defendants. There are inadequate remuneration arrangements for interpreters, especially when work is cancelled at short notice, and there are concerns around poor terms and conditions of service, quality assurance, performance data and transparency. Yet the Minister stated to the committee that, in 2024, only 0.7% of trials were delayed due to the lack of an interpreter, and that recent data showed an increase in service performance to 96%. How do we explain the clear disconnect between what the Government say is happening and what front-line interpreters and legal professionals report is actually happening?

As other noble Lords have said, the answer lies in the reliability of the data on which the MoJ relies for assessing the quality of interpreting services in the courts. As the committee has pointed out, the complaints system for stakeholders is the best measure of performance, yet the number of complaints does not equate to the number of unfulfilled requests for language expertise. In more than 5,000 cases last year, language requests were not fulfilled, with no explanation, yet complaints were not lodged. So I am afraid the data falls far short of the reality.

What is the solution? I think that, before signing a new contract, we should take a step back and look at what has happened in the past. The National Register of Public Service Interpreters—the NRPSI—has since 1994 maintained the independently managed and not-for-profit register of nearly 1,700 level 6-qualified interpreters with a minimum of 400 verified hours of professional experience. This register has long served as the gold standard for quality assurance in the sector, offering a robust framework, verifying qualifications, upholding professional conduct and ensuring interpreter accountability within the justice system.

The NRPSI therefore deserves to be listened to. It says that the root of the problem is systemic and relates, as we have heard, to the outsourcing of language services since 2012. Far from streamlining court operations, the system now relies heavily on off-contract bookings as a workaround for the deficiencies of the contracted model. It has led to a hopelessly fragmented and less transparent system. Now is a pivotal moment to put this right, before the current failures are perpetuated by a new outsourcing contract in 2026.

Let us consider what happened before 2012. It was a one-tier structure, where courts sourced interpreters directly from the NRPSI under a national agreement, with set fees, terms and conditions, and vetting, with an efficient system for complaints and disciplinary measures. Once a court official had dialled up the NRPSI list of, say, regulated and recommended Italian interpreters, they would then email those professionals to arrange a booking, contracting with each freelancer directly. It had the huge virtue of simplicity, with no middle people such as outsourcers causing a delay and taking a percentage for their trouble.

It was changed to an outsourcing model in 2012, principally to save costs. So I ask the Minister: does saving costs really outweigh the merits of efficiency, quality and accountability that existed before outsourcing? In the words of my expert:

“The current outsourcing contract with the Ministry of Justice has all but collapsed. The overriding failing in court interpreting which I have noticed is the last-minute search for off-contract interpreters. I continue to receive last-minute requests, not just from court officials but more commonly from a wide array of small to medium sized agencies. There’s absolutely no need for so many parties to be involved. I find it hard to believe that all this complexity in the back offices is any cheaper or more efficient than the pre-2012 arrangements”.


That is testimony from someone who really knows what is happening on the ground, day by day. There is no substitute for that. While I do not blame the Government for being misled by the data, now is the time to acknowledge the reality and respond accordingly.

Imprisonment for Public Protection (Re-sentencing) Bill [HL]

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 4th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for giving us the opportunity to debate this injustice. We both serve on a committee with the justice unions, as they are called. I recently succeeded the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, as the Conservative vice-president of this APPG, because the noble Earl is being cast into outer darkness and has decided to go quietly and hand over to me, rather than wait to be sacked.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, because one notices in this APPG that no one is really interested if the justice unions can be kept down and kept quiet—that is it. One looks at the unions in the justice industry—prison officers, for instance—and sees enormous problems that the Government are not addressing seriously. I wish they would.

As for the Bill, one of the weaknesses in this country is that you can get swept away, and nothing sounds quite as good as imprisonment for public protection: “Yes, we’ll lock them up and throw away the key”. That really was how this came in; the Government wished to show that they were prepared to be tough with people, without much mention of why. I accept, as one of the Ministers said to me, that some of the people who are detained for public protection probably should not be let out, but that decision should be made by a tribunal or group of people who can judge the mental state of the people in prison for public protection. It should not be allowed just to drift on and on.

There are lots of amendments to the Bill, and I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, has signed them all. I can see that he is trying to find a solution and he accepts that there may be problems in finding a precise way forward, but I would like to hear from the Minister that the Government are prepared to give this a fair wind. The most important thing is that they acknowledge that there has been a severe miscarriage of justice that needs putting right. That would be an extremely good start.

I will mention another word that has not been mentioned: class. These people are not middle-class people. When I was in the European Parliament, I was one of the founders of its human rights sub-committee and we went all over the place. We went to places such as the Czech Republic, as it then was, and to unfashionable places where the British Government were very concerned about human rights, such as Nicaragua. I had a very enjoyable time in Nicaragua visiting its prisons. But the key thing I noticed was that, certainly in eastern Europe, most prisoners were forgotten because they were ordinary people. They had no universities behind them nor people campaigning for them. They were basically working-class people who had fallen foul of the system.

Under the very authoritarian regimes that existed, particularly in eastern Europe, many of these people were locked up, and for many of them it was an indeterminate sentence. The gulag was an indeterminate sentence. Most of the people in the gulag were working-class. They were not intellectuals. The few that were, such as Sharansky and Daniel, had big campaigns mounted for them. I helped with those campaigns, but the fact of the matter is that many of the prisoners, as Gorbachev found when he came to power and started overhauling the system, were there by accident. They should not have been there at all. They had no advocates, they had no people behind them—maybe a partner 1,000 miles away across Russia, but no organised campaigns. That is the case with many of these people. I wonder how many of the 1,000 know each other, talk to each other and are able to swap notes and see how they might get out of the situation that they are in.

I am not going to deal with individual amendments, but they all point in the same direction. They are a genuine attempt by the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, and the colleagues who have tabled them to move the matter forward. This House is unique, in a way. I do not think you would have a debate like this in the Commons because there are more vested interests down there, but here we can be dispassionate. One of the things I am saying we need to be dispassionate about is the fact that there has been a massive miscarriage of justice and that now has to be put right. It is up to this Government, just as it was to the previous Government. I fully support what Alex Chalk was trying to do. He was my son’s MP. My son was one of the few people who voted for him, but he did not hold his seat. He was a good Justice Minister, as was as the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, who I knew when he was in that job. We have to move things forward. Somehow Ministers have to get hold of the Civil Service and say, “This is a blot on the British record for human rights”.

Of course, some people should not be released, but their cases should be reviewed, and there should be some form of appeal and some form of sentence. If they are not to be released, the sentence should be subject to review. I suspect a number of them have become institutionalised, and that a number of them were mentally ill before they ended up in prison, but our job as a public body is to make it possible for the justice system to be seen to be fair. My concern is that of these 1,000 people in prison today, probably 700 or 800 of them have no family, friends or social network, and that when they are let out they are going to need a lot of support to adjust back into the community.

This is the beginning of a big challenge. I hope our Ministers will be able to take it on board and solve this blot on our justice system.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, many of the points that I was going to make today have already been made far more eloquently than I could have made them, so I will not detain the Committee for very long. I have just two short points.

First, I have always been quite impressed with the Government’s argument that they are responsible for public protection, that they therefore cannot release people who are assessed to be a risk to the public and that any resentencing exercise would just take us around in circles because it would have to incorporate a safety assessment and we would end up back where we are today. But I was very struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, said and the statistic that 80% of IPPs in prison are there when their index offence was non-violent—I think I heard that correctly. That is an astonishing thing. I have learned something. If that is the case, how does the public protection argument stack up? Surely there is some answer to it if these people were originally convicted of non-violent offences.

Secondly, if the Government are nevertheless resolute that they do not want a resentencing exercise, I strongly commend the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, because the Bill and the amendments show how diverse the IPP population is. That is important, because this should affect the way the Parole Board assesses risk and the way that the Probation Service considers whether to recall.

To take just three categories illustrated by the amendments, first, there are those who have been previously released, who, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, are in a completely different category from those who have not. They have been assessed on a previous occasion to be safe to release. If they have been recalled, the fact that they have been previously released, and therefore considered safe, means that the burden and standard of proof on the Prison and Probation Service should be very high to show that they are still dangerous at their next review.

The second category is those who were juveniles when they committed their offences. The courts have been clear that young people are far more likely to rehabilitate quickly and are more open to it. For example, in the case of tariffs and detention during His Majesty’s pleasure, the courts have said that in the case of juveniles, their tariffs need to be reviewed much more regularly.

Thirdly and finally, there is the category of those who are mentally ill. We know from expert psychological evidence—in the third report to the Justice Committee—that the effect of the IPP sentence itself is a major factor in the mental health of IPP prisoners. The report said that

“someone may be deemed too high risk to be released based on their current mental health presentation, rather than based on their original offence.”

If that is the case, consideration should be given to transferring these prisoners to a more suitable environment than prison for treating them appropriately.

Whatever the Government’s decision on the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, I very much hope that it will lead to further progress in reducing the IPP and DPP prison population.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, looking around the Committee at the legal expertise present, I feel rather underqualified. However, I worked as a trustee for the Koestler Arts trust for some years, and that leads me to pick up the point made by my noble friend Lord Hastings that what people in prison need to achieve rehabilitation—which I know that the Government want—is hope. What has happened as a result of IPP is that hope has been replaced by uncertainty and inequality. We clearly have to put that right.

The other reason that I wanted to speak today was that the late and learned Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, Simon, was a close friend of mine. He made such an impassioned speech from these Benches that it made me feel that I too had to take up this cause because IPP, as we have heard, has resulted in enormous injustice. I return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, as did the noble Lord, Lord Carter, that that figure—that 80% are non-violent—is terrifying. I say to noble Lords on the Front Bench, who are distinguished in the law themselves, that if they could—and I really imagine that they will want to—shed some light on this, to seek by some way light at the end of the tunnel, that would be welcomed across the House.

I will not go on, because it has all been said and this is not the time to do so, but I say to noble Lords: please try to find a way forward here.

Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I have not spoken before on the Bill, and frankly, like others, I was rather astonished that this was a topic requiring legislation at all. Like the noble and learned Lord, I have been what you would probably call a low-level sentencer for a number of years.

I will make two points. First, in recent years, in my experience, the quality of pre-sentence reports has greatly improved: from what were sometimes formulaic and feeble reports to nowadays, in my more recent experience, really providing an insight into the defendant’s background, life and attitudes, and conveying realistic recommendations. To that extent, they must always be regarded as helpful, greatly improving on, as the noble Viscount described, representations made by the legal representatives after a few moments in the cells or in the court corridor before coming into court.

Secondly, this experience has led me to adopt the attitude that, whenever in doubt, a report should be directed. I, for one, never regretted directing a report. For that reason, I certainly support Amendments 5 and 6. In other words, pre-sentence reports should, wherever possible and sensible, be the norm.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I have not previously spoken on the substance of the Bill before, either, but I am very attracted by the noble Viscount’s amendment, for the reasons that he and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, have set out.

I think the Government have accepted that their Bill is not intended to prevent sentencers inviting pre-sentence reports in the case of personal characteristics. They are getting at the guidelines that should not take account of personal characteristics. However, there is a danger that, as the Bill stands, sentencers might be deterred slightly from seeking pre-sentence reports in the case of personal characteristics, even though, were the Bill not on the statute book, they would otherwise have done so.

The amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, sorts that out. It makes it absolutely clear that there is nothing to stop the sentencer seeking a pre-sentence report in the case of personal characteristics, if that is desirable for the purposes of the particular case. That is exactly what the legal position should be.

So, I strongly urge the Government to give close attention to Amendment 1 and indeed the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, which, as has been said, seeks to achieve the same thing. This is consistent with what the Government think their Bill allows for, but there is a danger that it might not have the effect they seek, whereas the noble Viscount’s amendment would clarify the position in what everyone must agree is the right way.

[Lord Hardie (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, have not spoken before on the Bill. I understand the sentiment behind the noble Viscount’s amendment. As a former judge in Scotland, I do not demur from the advantage of having such reports. However, I wonder whether there is an element of confusion in the various amendments. In the sense that the noble Lord, Lord Carter, seemed to suggest, there may be confusion in the mind of the sentencer as to whether he or she can order a report.

I do not read this clause as being that. Clause 1(2) specifies that the guidelines about pre-sentence reports may not include provision framed by reference to different personal characteristics of an offender. The personal characteristics are defined in Clause 3 as including race, religion or belief, and cultural background. So, I would have thought that it is irrelevant to determining a sentence that someone is of a certain race, or adheres to a certain religion, or has a certain cultural background. What one wants to know is something about the upbringing of the individual, whether he or she was abused as a child, and whether there are other circumstances in his or her upbringing that would explain his or her behaviour. So I do not see the need for the amendments that simply reinforce the position that already exists.