Sentencing Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

It is completely unreasonable to carry on as we are. As the noble and learned Lord said, we hope that at the 11th hour we will hear a reasonable and statesmanlike reply from the Minister.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, set out with great clarity the cogency of his proposed new clause. I entirely support it and, if he wishes to test the opinion of the House, I shall join him.

Many of the amendments in the group we are dealing with are concerned with providing a mechanism through the Parole Board. My amendment proposes another new clause that would not use the Parole Board but rather a panel of existing or former judges. The protection to deal with the risk that people seem to be fearful of is provided through that route rather than through a Parole Board decision.

I will come to explain the detail of my proposed new clause, but I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, who is not in his place, for their support for this new clause. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said a moment ago, it is uncontroversial that nobody of any humanity or sentience thinks that this IPP regime was a good idea or should be allowed to continue—and continue to cause harm. When the Minister winds up, will he admit or accept, on behalf of the Government, that the IPP regime as currently administered is causing real harm to people in prison and on licence outside prison, who are in danger for reasons wholly unconnected with the original offence that gave them the IPP in the first place? Will he accept that it is doing our reputation as a place of fairness and justice real harm? There is not an angle from which you could come at this problem without feeling dirty and appalled by the way in which it is being continued.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and I looked at 60 sets of case papers dealing with IPP offenders who had all been recalled. A large proportion of them had been recalled for relatively trivial reasons. A large proportion had been recalled for reasons that had nothing whatever to do with the index offence for which they had been originally sentenced. They had returned to prison, and some of them had been released again after a period and then re-recalled, thus extending the ludicrous, Kafkaesque nature of this type of sentence. As Lord Brown said all those years ago, it is a stain on our justice system. It is uncontroversial that where we are now is a disgraceful state of affairs, and it ought to be dealt with.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, cited in general terms some of the information provided to us by UNGRIPP, of which I am a patron. It is an interest group of families of IPP prisoners seeking to reform this regime. As the noble and learned Lord said, 946 people have never been released from their IPP sentence. Of that 946, 940 are in prison over their tariff limit, and 689 are incarcerated between 10 and 20 years beyond their tariff. These are numbers, but they describe real people and real families who are affected by this disgraceful state of affairs.

Just to underline the point about real harm, I note that 1,476 people are currently back in prison on IPP recall. Some 70% of those were recalled for an administrative reason—they failed to turn up for an appointment or they were drunk—but that had nothing whatever to do with the original offence, as I have said any number of times, nor had they committed an additional offence. One thing I learned from the study I did with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was that, if you are going to recall somebody by virtue of another form of misconduct and it amounts to a criminal offence, they should be prosecuted. They should not just be pulled off the street administratively; they should be charged, tried and sentenced or acquitted on the evidence. There should not be this sneaky little business of just pulling them off the street in an East German or Soviet way.

But that is enough of the figures; let me go back to my new clause. Where I differ from the method advanced by the noble and learned Lord and my noble friend Lord Hailsham is that our new clause would require a panel established by the Secretary of State

“to reconsider the cases of every person subject to a sentence of imprisonment for public protection … and in custody within six months of the date”

on which the Bill is enacted. The panel would consist of 12 judges or former judges under the age of retirement who have sat in the Crown Court, and they would be nominated to serve on the panel by the Lord Chancellor. But while I think that proposed new subsection (6E) is the magic subsection in the noble and learned Lord’s new clause, my proposed subsection (3) is the one that I invite your Lordships to concentrate on, because it introduces a degree of thinking about what is proportionate into the question that has to be discovered.

Subsection (3) reads:

“As soon as practicable after the establishment of the panel, a member of that panel—


so, it will be one judge at a time, not all 12 sitting in a group—

“must reconsider each case and determine whether, having regard to … (a) the nature of the person’s offending”.

Let me say in parenthesis that there will be some people serving an IPP sentence who may have been held to be dangerous because they have committed, for example, a double rape or a vicious, violent assault. But there are some people on IPPs who have done no more—I say “no more” in inverted commas—than commit a street robbery and stolen, with violence or with the threat of violence, somebody’s mobile telephone. They may have done it several times. Yes, that is very bad behaviour, but some of these people, having been given a 12-month or 18-month tariff, are still languishing in prison 20 years later. Is that what we call justice in this country?

Let us bring some sense of proportionality back to the assessment of the offender. Look at the period spent in custody; look at the risk to the public. Of course, we all worry about what risk is and how to assess it, but we have to make an attempt to assess the best, or the least worst, way of mitigating that risk. We either do it through the Parole Board, or we do it, it seems to me, through this judicial panel, but it has to be done. We cannot just sit on our hands and say, “It’s all too difficult”. If it is 10 years too late, if it is five years too late, if it is five weeks too late, if it is five days too late, if it is five minutes too late, it is too late, and we must do something right now.

The judge on the panel would have regard to

“the arrangements that can be made for supervision, rehabilitation and support in the community”.

Many of these people have become catastrophically institutionalised as a consequence of being imprisoned all this time. Just imagine that you have been bunged inside for robbing a person of their telephone—a relatively minor offence in the great canon of criminal affairs—and there you are, 20 years later, possibly having been recalled because you failed to turn up to an appointment at a parole or a probation office, asking yourself, “What on earth is the point? I will either take my own life or I will live in this place till the day I die of natural causes”. Let the panel, let the judge, look at what can be done with regard to supervision, rehabilitation and support outside prison.

If noble Lords are worried about that, the panel judge does not have the final decision, because his or her decision is susceptible to judicial review, and if the Secretary of State does not like it, he can refuse to accept the recommendation. And the Secretary of State’s decision is susceptible to judicial review.

There are different ways of dealing with risk, but whatever way you go at it, you have got to do it. Really, one must stop dallying around and saying, “It’s all too difficult and the Daily Wotsit won’t like it if somebody gets out”. We are bigger and better than that, and we should do something about it.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to support what my noble friend has said, and, indeed, to support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester’s amendment. I come, as it were, from a prison background, in the sense that I was Prisons Minister, God help me, 40 years ago. Also, until relatively recently—by which I mean 10 years ago—I was on the monitoring board of one of our local prisons. I agree entirely with my noble friend, and indeed with the right reverend Prelate, about the importance of out-of-cell purposeful activity. I agree too with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that far too often the prison workshops are not functional. That is a very great misfortune.

There are just two points I will make—a proviso and a question. The proviso, in a sense, is self-evident: if a condition is going to be imposed, it can operate only if the purposeful activity is actually provided within the Prison Service. Although that may be implicit in my noble friend’s amendment, it is not explicit. If the Government, in due time, come forward with an appropriate amendment, I hope that the provision is made explicit.

There is a different question, which I would like guidance on, perhaps from the Minister. I suppose it really reveals my own ignorance. If there is a condition that a prisoner is compliant with the requirement for purposeful activity, what is the consequence of non-compliance? My noble friend has addressed that, at least in theory, by her proposed new subsection (2)(b) in Amendment 66, because she contemplates, very sensibly, a report which might lead to the provision denying a prisoner early release for non-compliance, but if there is no consequential legislation to that effect, are there any existing statutory or other binding provisions which would penalise a prisoner who is deliberately not complying with purposeful activity that is made available? There should be, but if there is not any such requirement which can be enforced then my noble friend’s aspirations may prove to be ineffective.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s second point illustrates his first point: if there is no purposeful activity available, how can one enforce the denial of an early release by virtue of a person’s failure to comply with a purposeful activity?

I want, briefly, to go back to the late and much lamented Lord Ramsbotham. In his book about prisons, which I know the Minister will have read many times, he said that the three things that will reduce repeat offending are that a prisoner, on release, should have a place to live, should be able to return to a loving relationship and should have a job. I took that very much on board when I wrote a paper nearly 20 years ago entitled Prisons with a Purpose. I wrote it when I was the shadow Prisons Minister, in the days when my noble friend Lord Cameron was the leader of the Opposition.

I visited about 75 prisons, young offender institutions and secure training units during that time. One of the things that struck me was that there were some wonderful examples of purposeful activity going on in a number of prisons but, as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has pointed out, it very much depended on the leadership of the prison. If you had an inadequate governor, you had an inadequate regime within the prison, particularly within the education and training sections of that prison.

I have made a few visits to a number of detention centres and I remember being taken with great pride by the governor on duty to a workshop in a great big shed in a West Midlands category C prison. I will not name it, because things may well have changed by now. In the workshop were adult men aged between 21 and goodness knows what, and they were making hairnets. I have absolutely no doubt that there is a market somewhere for hairnets. But I equally had no doubt then, and have no doubt now, that the prisoners in those workshops, having been released, would never go to work in a hairnet factory. So, it was just time filling.

I went to another prison in Wales, where I saw male adult prisoners sorting blue plastic bits from green plastic bits and putting the blue ones in one tray and the green ones in the other tray. They were apparently parts of some electrical connection system. Again, these are the sorts of activities that would achieve nothing in so far as Lord Ramsbotham’s provisos were to be complied with.

I went to an open prison in the south of England where, far from the prison, prisoners and prison officers taking advantage of the farmland and market garden within their premises, now long closed of course, I found men playing cards behind the wheelbarrow sheds—and who else was in the card game but a couple of prison officers? Again, this is just time filling.

The problem is further exacerbated by prisoner churn. If you are sentenced in, say, Canterbury Crown Court and are sent to Canterbury prison that evening, within a few days or weeks you will be transferred to Maidstone prison to allow others to come in. Maidstone prison will be receiving prisoners from Maidstone Crown Court. The Canterbury prisoners who have been moved to Maidstone will be required to move to Lewes, then from Lewes to Southampton, and from Southampton to Winchester. So there is, metaphorically speaking, a jumbo jet of prisoners moving around the prison estate. How can they do any sensible activity? How can they go on any sensible course if, having barely started it, they are then moved to another prison?

I am happy to advertise on behalf of Timpson. I have seen a number of its workshops in operation in prisons up and down this country, and I have been served in shops by graduates of the Timpson in-house system in prisons. There, people are learning a real job that can translate from inside prison to the high street. They can go out and earn a living, pay their rent and taxes, and look after their dependants. That is the sort of work we need to see done, and more of it, in prisons.

That is why I wholly applaud Amendments 65 and 67, tabled by my noble friend Lord Hailsham: they hit the nail on the head. If we do not have real, genuinely purposeful, activity in prisons, the whole thing is a sham, and you will get repeat offenders coming in and out like a revolving door, and the prison population will simply grow and grow.

So, whether we vote on this or not, it is absolutely essential that the Government get a grip on the way in which training and education are dealt with in our prisons. I know of course that the Minister knows this personally—he has known this for 30 years—but lots of people in government do not, and lots of people at the Treasury do not, either. They do not seem to realise that by reinforcing failure—junk in, junk out—all you are doing is wasting the public’s taxes and not producing one ounce of public safety.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. We sat together as youth magistrates for many years at the old Hammersmith youth court. She has fully set out what must be an anomaly. I have not heard any explanation in defence of the current situation. She gave the example of two offenders who have committed the same offence at the same time but, because of some geographical issue, were sentenced at different times on either side of their 18th birthday, with different outcomes. They would not have had access to referral orders or youth rehabilitation orders, which are, in our experience, better at rehabilitating young people.

There would also be the problem with the DBS checks. If somebody was subsequently to get or apply for a job, they would get different results in the DBS check depending on whether they were sentenced before or after their 18th birthday. This is an anomaly. I look forward to what my noble friend can say, because this is part of a wider look at how youth DBS records are kept. Nevertheless, this example is a true anomaly. I hope that the Government can be as sympathetic as possible to this amendment.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, in the spirit of friendship, I acknowledge the charming but highly persuasive way in which my noble friend advanced her amendment, which I am only too pleased to support, and recognise the support of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, who is also my friend. I will embarrass him further by saying that he is my very distant kinsman, which will completely ruin his credibility for anything further in his parliamentary life; it is a cross that he will have to bear.

The noble Lord and my noble friend bring to the Chamber years of experience as sitting and sentencing magistrates. Very often in England and Wales, it is magistrates who deal with youth offenders. We should listen to what they have to say and to their experience. I very much to support all that they have said. I urge the Government to pay close attention to what has been said and come forward with proposals of their own, if they do not accept what my noble friend advanced in her amendment, so that we can get rid of this injustice, which is, as the noble Lord said, a most extraordinary anomaly.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 93 and 94. Amendment 93 is concerned with the impact of changes in the law on sentences that are currently being served under the law that was in force preceding the change. In other words, offenders were sentenced under a law that has been altered. The amendment calls for reports to be provided every three years, with a view to such changes in the law leaving defendants suffering from injustice.

Amendment 94 concerns the direct effect of such changes in the law on sentences that are currently being served or that have been imposed. Proposed new subsection (1)(a) in Amendment 94 concerns cases where the offence itself for which the sentence was imposed has been abolished, and proposed new subsection (1)(b) in Amendment 94 concerns a case where the sentence has been materially altered.

The amendment would enable a person serving a sentence for an offence that had been abolished, or where the sentence had been altered, to seek a review of the case of the sentence that is currently being served. On such a review, the sentence originally imposed could be quashed, or there could be a resentencing.

In practice, of course, Amendment 94 would come into play only where either the offence had been abolished or the available sentence had been reduced, because one cannot imagine an offender seeking a change of sentence where the available sentence had been increased.

Underlying both amendments is a concern that changes in the law would have the effect that an offender’s sentence would not have been imposed or would have been less severe had the law at the time of sentencing been the reformed law rather than the law under which the offender was sentenced, and that such changes should take effect to the benefit of the offender who would not be at such risk now.

I would suggest that it is a matter of simple justice that changes in the law which would have resulted in an offender serving a sentence less severe, or not being convicted of any offence, should have the benefit of the change in the law that pertained at the time of sentencing, so that a review would be appropriate.

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[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

I am obliged to the noble Lord. It is intended that the court should have regard only to the two elements that are referred to therein.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, before the Minister gets to his feet, can I rather impertinently squeeze in a request that probably has little to do with Amendment 68? I am doing it now, so there we are.

A few years ago, I, along with other people, conducted a review into the work of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. One of the problems we found is that many prisoners who were dissatisfied with the way their conviction had been arrived at, and the way in which the Court of Appeal had subsequently dealt with it, found it almost impossible to get hold of a transcript of the sentencing remarks. Following the questioning of my noble and learned friend by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, it looks as though such a convicted prisoner would not be able to make use of this amendment to get hold of the sentencing remarks my noble and learned friend is partly complaining about. Can the Government please bear in mind—not tonight obviously—that this is a real practical difficulty for people in prison who feel, for good reason, that they have been improperly convicted and wish to have the CCRC consider their case? It is much more difficult for the CCRC, and certainly for the dissatisfied defendant, to advance their cause if they cannot get hold, either because it is difficult or because it is expensive, of the sentencing remarks.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, in her place, and I wish her a very speedy recovery. I also congratulate her on her precision and the brevity of her remarks. I wish I was going to be as brief as she has been.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

So do we.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

So does my noble and learned friend; that is a free drink that he is not going to get.

Unusually for a modern criminal justice Bill, which was ably introduced by the Minister, this is, relatively speaking, a remarkably short one. It has only 18 clauses. It is rather spoiled, however, as there are 53 pages of schedules. I dream of the day when any Government decides to stop producing criminal justice Bills of voluminous length, but there we are.

I understand the political and moral basis for the provisions about defendants who refuse to appear in court to be sentenced. I listened with great care to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, on that. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Sandhurst’s scepticism about whether they will work in practice. We will see how those arguments develop in Committee.

I do, however, welcome the proposals with regard to the ULS scheme. I had to operate it myself as a law officer when the Minister was at the Crown Prosecution Service. I think it is fair to say that we suffered together in that struggle. There will be more to say in Committee about the NDA provisions, which amend the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.

This afternoon, I want to address a point about overseas victims not mentioned in the Bill. I spoke about this on 7 February 2024, on the fourth day in Committee on the then Victims and Prisoners Bill. I make no apology for doing so again, and I will table the same amendment to this Bill that I tabled to that Bill. In introducing these remarks, I refer to my interest as a barrister whose practice includes corporate crime cases.

Multinational companies have been fined more than £1.5 billion over the past 10 years or so after investigations by the Serious Fraud Office into corruption abroad. But only 1.4% of those fines—about £20 million—has been used to compensate victim countries or communities abroad. In my view, this needs to change.

Much of this corruption occurs in African countries that are already suffering terrible economic hardship, food and energy crises, and inflation. They are in dire need of economic support to repair the damage caused by corruption.

United Kingdom Governments have been vocal in their support for compensating foreign state victims of corruption. But the action actually taken to compensate foreign states tells a different story and leaves us open to charges of hypocrisy. Most corruption cases brought before the English courts involve foreign jurisdictions. We step in as the world’s policeman, investigating and prosecuting crimes that take place in other countries, but keep all the fines for ourselves. This is important because corruption causes insidious damage to the poor —and the not so poor—particularly in emerging markets. The United Nations says that it

“impedes international trade and investment; undermines sustainable development; threatens democracy and deprives citizens of vital public resources”.

The African Union estimated in 2015 that 25% of the continent’s gross domestic product was lost to corruption. Every company convicted of overseas corruption in this jurisdiction should be ordered to compensate the communities it has harmed. That would be both just and effective. Compensation should come through investment in programmes targeted at decreasing corruption and benefiting local communities; for example, by building and resourcing more schools and hospitals.

At first glance, English law encourages compensation. It is required to take precedence over all other financial sanctions—so far, so good. But, as with many noble ambitions, problems lurk in the detail. Compensation is ordered in criminal cases only where the loss is straightforward to assess, even though the trial judge is usually of High Court or senior Crown Court level and will deal with complex issues every day.

For example, in 2022, in a case in which I appeared for a victim state, Glencore pleaded guilty to widespread corruption in the oil markets of several African states. Although it was ordered to pay £281 million, not a single penny has gone back to the communities where the corruption happened, largely because it was held that the compensation would be too complicated to quantify. The Airbus deferred prosecution agreement tells a similar story. The company was required to pay €991 million to the United Kingdom in fines, but compensation to the numerous Asian countries where the corruption took place formed no part of the agreement.

The process for compensating overseas state victims—and particularly overseas state victims—needs simplification so that real money can be returned to them. An answer perhaps lies in incentivising the corporations that commit the crimes to pay compensation voluntarily on the understanding that it would not increase the total amount, including penalties and costs, that they would have to pay. The company could be given further incentive by receiving a discount on the fine it would still be required to pay to the United Kingdom Treasury, or an increase in the fine if it refuses or fails to make redress.

The required changes are, I suggest, straightforward and would cost the taxpayer nothing. It could create a standard measure of compensation, which would ensure consistency and transparency, as well as avoiding the difficulty of calculating a specific amount of loss or damage in each case. The compensation figure could equal whichever is the higher of the profit made by the company from its corrupt conduct or the amount of the bribes it paid to obtain the profits. This already happens when companies are sentenced, save that all the money goes to the Treasury. The defendant company would pay nothing more, but at least some of the money would benefit the victim state or the communities harmed within it.

Of course, it would be naive to think that compensation paid to a foreign state could never lead to further corruption. That is clearly a risk. To address this, defendant companies would be encouraged or required to enter into an agreement with the relevant state, which would include obligations to comply with United Nations guidance on the treatment of compensation funds and to identify projects for which the funds would be used, possibly with the involvement of a local non-governmental organisation.

To encourage states to enter into these types of agreements, corporations would be permitted to donate the compensation funds, for example, to the World Bank or International Monetary Fund for projects in the region instead, or to pay down a country’s debt, if an agreement cannot otherwise be reached.

The benefit of this approach is that, unlike at present, where there is no disadvantage in doing nothing, it puts the onus on the defendant companies to take restorative action—something that will appeal to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It also addresses the difficulties in quantifying losses by creating a simple approach that gives companies early sight of the amount that they will have to pay.

The Bill is, I am sure, full of wonderful provisions, but it does lack this wonderful diamond which needs to be added to the ring around the Minister’s finger— I do not know how far I can go with that one. But let us do this. We can then hold our heads high and enhance our national reputation in the fight against international corruption. This is not a matter of party politics. It is a matter of simple justice.

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

That is very rare. If you appeal out of time, you have pretty much had it. You need to have a really good reason to do so. I now turn to—

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My noble friend is very gracious, but I fear there is a new trend which is not the practice of your Lordships’ House: to have an extended back and forth at Second Reading. I know this may be the practice of another place not far from here but, with all due respect to noble Lords and to my noble friend with her good humour and fortitude, I am not sure that that is something that we should innovate this evening.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I was only going to support the Minister. One of the differences between an appeal by a defendant in a criminal matter and the unduly lenient sentencing system is that anybody can write to the law officers to complain that a sentence is unduly lenient. Many of the people that the Minister and I may have dealt with in the past wrote in having read an article in a newspaper saying that a particular defendant had been given what they thought was a lenient sentence. Nobody does that to appeal a criminal sentence as a defendant.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord.

Turning to what is not in the Bill, I of course recall that the Crime and Policing Bill—the Ministry of Justice has some of the clauses in relation to that—has been extensively criticised for being too long. This Bill is now being criticised for being too short—so there is a slight sense of being criticised whichever way we do it.

I will deal with some of the matters that were raised in relation to this. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked whether we intend to bring in the sections in the Victims and Prisoners Act dealing with definitions. I hope that I may write to her in relation to that, because some parts have been implemented and some others are planned to be implemented. I do not want to give her an answer that might turn out not to be entirely accurate.

On the question of homicide abroad, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we are conscious of this being an issue. As I am sure the noble Baroness knows, we are working on a code to give assistance to families abroad. The question of whether the victims’ code is going to apply is difficult, because many of the provisions in the victims’ code deal only with cases that can be prosecuted in this country and therefore would not apply. Again, it is a matter that we are considering and reflecting on and we will be very happy to engage with her and other noble Lords in relation to that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, raised the question of compensation for economic crimes abroad, such as corruption. I entirely agree with him about the importance of not forgetting about the effect of these cases on other countries. In the circumstances, it might be best for me to suggest that we meet to discuss it, because it is an important matter to which I would like to give some serious thought.

Transcripts were raised by many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks. Transparency is really important to the Government. That is one of the reasons we are now going to make the magistrates’ court a court of record: there will be recordings of all proceedings in order to shine a light on what is happening. If you are recording something, obviously your intention is that at some point it may need to be turned into a transcript. I am old enough to remember the days of the shorthand writer in court. The transcript used to be phenomenally expensive, because you had somebody sitting there typing it out and then it had to be ordered and checked. We are hopeful that artificial intelligence is going to help by bringing down the cost of transcripts: we are all familiar with dictating to our computers these days, so the costs may be in checking rather than actually transcribing.

In the meantime, as far as the victims of rape and serious sexual offences are concerned, the transcripts of those sentencing remarks are free to victims in those cases. We conducted a pilot and, following that, those transcripts will be available free of charge to victims.

The noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, raised the question of victim personal statements, and said that there are anxieties about censorship. This is a tricky one, because as the noble Lord will know, sometimes victims misunderstand the purpose of a victim personal statement and do not quite understand why they cannot include a number of things in it. Again, this is important to us. No victim should feel that their words have been censored. They should be able to say what they want to say—we are going to think about that one.

I turn finally to the issue of backlog and delay. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti raised the question of a rumour about what is to happen to the proposals in the review conducted by Sir Brian Leveson. I think that it could be seen from the expression on my face that it was the first time I had heard of that rumour. Our intention is that proper consideration be given to the important matter of how we deal with the backlog and delay. Speaking for myself, I want to persuade people and take them with us where we can do so. These matters are to be discussed, and I hope that people will listen to each other. Nobody thinks that the status quo is acceptable; the question is how we deal with it. The Government are proposing a package of measures, one aspect of which, as noble Lords know, is the suggestion of slightly moving the line, as other Governments have in the past. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I do not engage in this and debate it today. I am absolutely confident that there will be other opportunities to do so.

This Bill will help strengthen our justice system. It used to be, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, that victims were treated as mere witnesses and had very little by way of rights. That is no longer the case. This Bill continues the journey of putting them where they should be, at the heart of the justice system. I beg to move.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I absolutely accept much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said about the awful nature of historic child abuse and the reasons why there is often a delay before bringing forward complaints, but it is important that we do not conflate civil proceedings and criminal proceedings. The earlier group was to do with people claiming damages, where the defendant is not usually the perpetrator. There may be reasons why we have reached a stage where there cannot be a fair trial. I will leave that aside for the moment.

This amendment is concerned with criminal offences. There is not a limitation period for criminal offences generally, subject to the prosecution deciding that so much time has elapsed that it is not appropriate to bring forward a claim. The noble Baroness has experience of occasionally making those decisions in very old cases. The Minister is pointing at me and is going to give a longer and more authoritative answer than I will attempt to do now. I make the point in general terms.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. While I entirely understand the motivation behind the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I am not entirely sure that it is necessary. As the noble Lord said, there is no limitation for the bringing of this particular Section 9 offence.

I do not wish to get into my anecdotage, but I remember that, as a law officer, one very often had to deal with historic offences whereby a mature person, in their 50s, 60s or 70s, was being indicted or prosecuted for an offence they committed many years ago against a minor. Had the problem existed that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, envisages through her amendment, that would have been a matter we would have had to consider. As the Minister will no doubt tell us from her experience as someone who worked at a senior level in the Crown Prosecution Service, you have to consider whether there is an adequacy of evidence and whether it is in the public interest to bring that person to trial. The age of the offence might be considered by the prosecutor, but there is no time bar, as I understand it. While I may well be corrected for being out of date and ignorant, I certainly do not think that there is a need for this amendment, although it is well motivated.

I have a suspicion that I have got this entirely wrong and that the Minister is going to tell me that it would have been better if I had kept to my place, but there we are. There are plenty of things that we could do with the Bill—make it shorter, for example—but I am not sure that this amendment is one that we need to add to it.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in strong support of the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I do not know whether it is necessary. I declare an interest as a victim. My concern about the historic sex offences is the prison population. We have large numbers of historic sex offenders in prison. It creates great problems for the Prison Service. However, a custodial sentence is the only sensible disposal. We need to work out what to do with historic sex offenders within the prison system.

Accidental Prison Releases

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The Ministry of Justice has a programme called Enable, around how we develop the skills of our fantastic staff. In the short term, we have introduced new checklists that are more robust than ever and asked for duty governor sign-off on releases. We are investing more money in training for our staff. That is not just for staff who are joining the service; it is important that we invest in the staff who have been with us for some time. The offender management unit does complex work. I have spoken to governors who have been in the service for many years. When they look at the release checks that the offender management units must do, they cannot believe how much more complex it has become over the last few years.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I know that the Minister works extremely hard and is very knowledgeable about this subject. He and I have been cantering around this track for more than two decades. When I was last in opposition, in the 2000s, I was shadow Prisons Minister and visited 75 of the prisons, young offender institutions and so forth in England and Wales. Even though there was a Labour Government, nobody ever said that it was the Labour Government’s fault that people escaped. Can we have a little less of it being said that it is the last Government’s fault? In the 2000s, there were people escaping, there were high levels of suicide and high levels of violence against prison officers, and there was sewage flowing from the top floors of prisons into the lower floors. The whole estate was in a shambles and the staff in a state of low morale. Let us solve this problem together. The Minister and I know that this can be done. I ask him not to fall into the trap of reading out the Whip’s notes.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord and I know each other very well. I hope he knows that I have my own view on this, because, like him, I visit lots of prisons all the time. It is clear that our prisons need investment and that we need to build new prisons. Only last week I went to a new prison which will be opening in 2028. These are modern, highly efficient prisons that are there not just to keep the public safe but to rehabilitate people. The problem that we are trying to fix is a long-term problem. It is not just about buildings; it is about people and how we support our staff to deliver an amazing service in rehabilitating people so that when they leave prison they do not come back.

Trials: Timeliness

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this important issue. Palestine Action has conducted an escalating campaign involving alleged criminal damage to Britain’s national security infrastructure, intimidation and violence. This Government unreservedly condemn any crimes of this kind. That said, as the noble Lord will understand, it would be wrong for me to comment on individual cases that are awaiting trial. In relation to when trials take place, in the same way that no Government can tell the Crown Prosecution Service which cases to prosecute, this Government do not tell courts which cases to prioritise when listing trials. These are decisions for independent judges to make, free from political pressure.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister will remember from her time as a Crown Court judge that the time between a case first coming before a Crown Court and being listed for trial has got longer and longer. Now, perhaps in her old court, trials are being listed for 2028 and 2029. This is unacceptable for victims, for witnesses and even for the defendant. It requires some will and leadership to crack this. What are the Government intending to do about it? The 1,250 extra days promised to the system by the Lord Chancellor just the other day could be taken up by her old court alone in one year. Please let us have some action.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I could not agree more with the basic premise of the noble and learned Lord’s question. It is simply unacceptable, and behind every one of those statistics are human beings waiting for justice. Our immediate reactions are that we intend to fund a record high of 111,250 sitting days in the Crown Court, to free up an additional 2,000 days in the Crown Court by extending the sentencing powers of the magistrates’ courts from six to 12 months, and to make some capital investment. But it is obvious to everybody that simply making efficiencies and putting financial help into the system will not deal with the problem. The backlog is now twice what it was before Covid, which is why the Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to look at fundamental reforms of how the system works. We are considering those and will respond in due course.

IPP Sentences

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

We have 233 IPP prisoners in secure mental health hospitals. From having been to the hospitals and met the individuals, I know that the care that they get from our nursing professionals is exceptional. It is also important that when they come back into the prison system, they have a soft landing and not a hard landing. That is an area that I am working on as we speak. Also important is that when people leave prison, they go to an approved premises. We have a trial going on where we are extending them going there from 12 to 16 weeks but also having a dedicated individual psychologist to support them. That is already having gains now.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

Does the Minister accept that the current recall system for IPP offenders is confused, confusing, overly bureaucratic and irrational, and that it creates injustice and just increases the number of mentally ill people and those without any hope in custody? Would he please accelerate his efforts to mend it?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his question, and for the work that he and the noble and learned Lord Thomas have done on this area. It is really important, and the focus has been very helpful. Already, the documents are clearer and more focused. Senior managers now oversee all recall decisions. From 3 November this year, we are extending the post-recall timeframes to improve planning and decision-making. That is thanks to Shirley Debono, who has helped us on that as well. The multidisciplinary progression panels are the way to do this, because we need to make sure that everybody who is in prison on an IPP sentence has hope, engages with the action plan, gets out and stays out.

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

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 4th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Huge benefit can be obtained from using the places that are elsewhere. Those are the points that we ought to think about when looking at these amendments. If all else fails, we should have an expert committee—but we should not have a committee unless it is able to get somewhere, because, otherwise, it will raise false hope.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for his continued campaign in this area. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and my noble friend Lord Moylan for their remarks in support of the campaign and the general thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, discussed.

It is very tempting in Committee on a short Bill such as this to want to rehearse the Second Reading debate. Unlike the noble and learned Lord, who analysed the problems before us with a forensic stiletto, I tend to come from the blunderbuss school of argument. I would prefer to give this piece of injustice a thorough whacking, but, unfortunately, that would not be helpful; it would be repetitive and would probably not move the Government.

Because I am familiar with the Justice Ministers on the Front Bench, I know that they both find themselves in a position in which they would rather not be. They did not invent the IPP and are not responsible for its progress since 2003. I suspect that they heartily wish they were dealing with something else—but they are not, and they have to deal with this, so here we all are.

I will make one or two brief points. You could not put a cigarette paper between me and the noble and learned Lord in relation to the remarks he just made. The IPP sentence is uncontroversially unjust. It is also uncontroversial to say that, within the sentence as a whole, there are elements that aggravate that injustice. As the noble and learned Lord pointed out, the absurdities of the recall regime—the monstrous consequence of a slight breach in a recall or the terms of a licence—can lead to a recall in relation to something that has nothing whatever to do with the initial offence. In addition, there is the inability of the state properly to police the return of people to imprisonment without a separate and new trial in relation to wholly different allegations.

All those things ought to stick in our craws, and I think they probably do. However, we feel bound up in the bureaucracy and the sheer inability to move things along, because there are so many other moving parts in the world of public policy. One is never able to clear a path through to achieve what we all want to do: to end every consequence of the IPP regime, consequences which were to some extent ameliorated by the 2008 changes and by the abolition of the sentence in 2012. None the less, we are still here having these debates—wringing our hands and having anguished discussions—when we all know what we need to do.

I will do my best to return to the amendments and then I will stop talking. An expert committee is fine, but we have several hundred experts—they are called judges. It seems to me that by sitting either singly or in batches of two or three, they could form lots of expert committees to break the back of this problem.

Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I also have Amendment 6 in this group. As my noble friend said, we spent some time trying to understand what are characteristics and what are circumstances. There is sometimes quite a grey line between the two, and there are of course factors which may be both. My noble friend has referred to pregnancy. I realised after I had tabled the amendment that better than “an assessment which would be beneficial” would be “an assessment which would be suitable”—“suitable” being the word used in the sentencing code—or “appropriate”, which is a very good catch-all term. However, my point is clear enough.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Hailsham, I begin my remarks by apologising for not having been able to attend the earlier stages of the Bill. However, I am happy to say that, like my noble friend, I have read the report and I am reasonably up to date with the way in which the debates have gone.

I am very much attracted by what my noble friend said in support of his Amendment 1, and I speak from a position of some—but not a great deal—of experience as a sentencer. I was a recorder of the Crown Court for 15 years, from 1998 until about 2015, with time off when serving in the Government. One of the things I found most useful in dealing with what I thought was the most difficult task as a judge was the advice and help of the sentencing report.

If you are a High Court judge, you tend, if you are dealing with criminal cases, to deal only with life sentence cases. The job that you have to do when sentencing is to consider the tariff within the life sentence. This is difficult but not, perhaps, as complicated as having to deal with the multiplicity of sentences involved in road traffic cases, drug cases, dishonest acquisition cases, and so on, and obviously cases to do with assault and other forms of violence.

As a recorder, as a Crown Court judge and as a magistrate—I see the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, is in his place—one is dealing with, in a sense, a much more complicated sentencing picture. The assistance of sentencing reports is huge and valuable. Anything that the Bill can do to make the life of the sentencer easier and to enable him or her to produce a juster sentence is to be welcomed, and the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Hailsham through his Amendment 1 provides the sort of assistance that I would very much have wished to have had as a low-level sentencer. It is perhaps more neatly encompassed in the suggestion through Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Marks.

Either way, both amendments appear to me to be trying to undo the political mess that has caused the arrival of the Bill. I understand the politics of all this; I am sure we all do. It is a thoroughly unnecessary Bill, one that the Government allowed themselves to be backed into a corner about. It may well be that they regret it. However, given that we have got the Bill, I invite the Government to pay close attention to the speech of my noble friend and to listen very carefully to my chambers colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Marks, when he comes to speak to Amendment 2.

[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.

Criminal Cases Review Commission

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The Government are actively looking into the concerns raised about the compensation cap and will provide an update on that matter in due course. We would encourage Mr Sullivan to make an application to the miscarriage of justice application service, and we will prioritise his application because of the length of his prison sentence.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, since we discussed the CCRC last week, it has become apparent that Mr Chris Henley KC, who wrote a review of the CCRC in relation to the Malkinson case, thinks that the chief executive gave inaccurate evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee. Nobody places any blame on the Secretary of State or on the Minister in this place for the current state of the CCRC, but has the time not come for the decision on who should be the next chair of the CCRC to be made not in the near future but today? It is unravelling quickly, and there will be more Malkinsons and more cases of that hideous nature unless the Government really grab hold of it and take charge.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord raised those points a couple of weeks ago and, since then, we have had the letters in the Sunday Times about the appearance of the chief executive in front of the Justice Select Committee. I shall not comment on that, because the CCRC is an independent body, but it has already begun to implement a number of the Henley recommendations—and, of course, we intend to go further on that. On the appointment of the interim chair, as the noble and learned Lord will know the objective is to have an interim chair for 18 months to review the CCRC’s operations. An individual has been identified and is going through the approvals process, so the announcement will be made imminently.