Prisoners: Early Release Scheme

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is correct that probation is under a lot of pressure and our probation colleagues do an amazing job in these difficult situations. I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time since I have taken on this role visiting probation staff around the country, and although we are recruiting an extra 1,000 probation staff by March next year—that is on track and going well—it takes time to train people and for them to gain experience, because much of their role is about relationship building and understanding the challenges that offenders face.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, one way in which the prison population could be reduced would be to deal with prisoners on remand, who are one in five of all prisoners at the moment. They do not have any access to meaningful activity, and we need to move the process along by which they have their cases heard. Can the Minister tell the House what steps have been taken to reduce the remand population and when we are likely to see that reduction taking effect?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am afraid I would not want to put a date on when things are going to change, but I assure the noble Lord that the remand population of 17,000 is far too high. He is right that a number of prisoners who are on remand do not engage as well as they should in all the opportunities they have to turn their lives around—for example, education and purposeful activity. Changing magistrates’ sentencing powers to 12 months will free up Crown Court time to reduce the backlog, and this will reduce time spent on remand.

Prison Capacities

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, the one thing that we can take away from this timely debate, which was well introduced by my noble friend Lady Burt, is that it has demonstrated that the Minister has an inbox full of difficult decisions. The current action to release prisoners early cannot remove all the risks inherent in this exceptional situation, but it does expose the problems, weaknesses and failures of the current justice system. The immediate need to free up prison spaces cannot be allowed to mask these failures. A top-to-toe set of reforms is needed from pre-sentencing through to licensing ending.

This debate has shown that the problems are extensive: there is a lack of meaningful activity in prisons; sentence inflation; vulnerability of prisoners to self-harm; drug abuse; poor morale in the Prison and Probation Service workforce; shortage of staff at all levels; and a lack of resource to effectively provide essential housing, skills and healthcare when leaving prison. The list goes on—in the course of this debate I have written down another seven or eight that should appear on the Minister’s action list. I want to add another: the so-called dynamic pricing of facilities offered to those seeking to train offenders within prison, which is pricing NGOs offering training out of prisons, such as Redemption Roasters at The Mount prison.

But there is great work going on, as we have heard. That needs replication and augmentation. Will the Minister, with all his experience at his elbow, agree that wholesale reform is needed, and as swiftly as possible? When will he be able to set out the actions that we need to take to resolve all these difficult issues, and will he provide a wholesale reform?

This is a massive project, which needs fixing so that the punishment needle can be moved back towards rehabilitation and reducing offending. That will produce a much more productive activity list for prisoners when they leave prison as well, but it will also save huge costs to taxpayers and make an improvement to society at large. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.