Sentencing Bill

Lord Sandhurst Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I say at the outset how sorry I was to learn of the death of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. She will be much missed around the House. She was a powerful champion for victims.

I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the Bill, but I must say that it does not live up to the expectations one might have of a Sentencing Bill. It is not a plan for safer streets or a stronger justice system; it is, in essence, a plan to release offenders early because our prisons are full. The Government present this as a reform, but much is, in truth, a knee-jerk reaction to the challenge of managing prison capacity, and it is one that risks public safety.

The centrepiece of the Bill is the presumption that any sentence of 12 months or less will be suspended, so, in practice, short custodial sentences will all but disappear. Figures suggest that around 43,000 offenders will avoid prison altogether. Among them will be repeat burglars, serial shoplifters and sex offenders. This is not sentencing reform; it is surrender. How can any Government who claim to be tough on crime defend that?

The Government say this will apply only to “non-violent, non-sexual” offences, but as any practitioner knows, many assaults, domestic abuse cases and sexual offences fall at or below that 12-month threshold. Those offenders will now walk free. To allow this will be a profound failure of the state’s duty to protect its citizens—unless it has the unintended effect, of course, that courts increase nominal sentences to override the presumption. Will we in fact see an increase in the number of immediate sentences of 15 to 18 months? That would be an unintended and perhaps unfortunate consequence, but we know how human behaviour reacts.

The Bill also reduces the time to be served in custody. For most offenders, automatic release will come after just 33% of the sentence—five months of a 15-month term. The rest will be served in the community, supervised, in theory, by the hard-pressed Probation Service. It has been predicted there will in fact be an immediate 6% rise in crime. As Cicero said: to what good? That is not sentencing reform; it is a policy of early release with rising crime the consequence.

We are told that this is about rehabilitation. Are those who make up the 6% to be treated as rehabilitated? Worse, what new money is to be invested in probation, treatment or community infrastructure? There will simply be a prison system operating at 98% capacity, with Ministers desperate to empty it.

The Probation Service will bear the weight of these changes. As we know, it is already overstretched, under- staffed and struggling to manage risk. The Government’s own impact assessment concedes that an additional 580 officers will be required each year, at a cost of £30 million a year—funding that simply does not exist in the current settlement. As the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, on which I served, has demonstrated, reducing numbers in prison does not mean a saving: the running costs of prisons will remain the same. Will the Minister explain where in the ministry’s budget the money will come from? Will it be from defence legal aid fees or the budget for our crumbling courts? Can we have answers?

Clause 11 goes further still by removing from the courts key aspects of sentencing and transferring them to probation officers. They are not judges, are not judicially trained and already work beyond capacity. They will now bear responsibility for deciding how much rehabilitative activity an offender must complete. That is a big shift of responsibility. Sentencing—the determination of punishment—is, and should remain, a judicial function. It is a matter for judges applying the law in open court.

How can we have a Sentencing Bill that, in effect, removes an important plank of sentencing from the courts and the public eye? How will the public know that punishment is being imposed consistently and in proportion to the offence in question? What safeguards will prevent political or managerial pressure—I emphasise managerial pressure—from influencing those decisions? Policy will be made and put into effect behind closed doors. An important part of a sentence in a given case will not be given in public.

That is not reform; it is the start of the separation of powers being dismantled. It hands quasi-judicial authority to an exhausted service, doing so without additional resources, oversight or accountability. If the Minister believes that probation officers should exercise the functions of judges, he should say so openly to Parliament. To make such a change under the guise of efficiency is constitutionally wrong.

The Bill introduces a host of new community restrictions on offenders, including bans on entering pubs, sporting events or defined geographical areas. On paper that may sound straightforward, but how will it work? Who will be responsible for enforcement? Will it be the licensed trade, the police or venue owners themselves? Who will be told? In a big city pub, who is to know? The Bill gives no clarity, indicates no resourcing and gives no accountability framework; it simply assumes that someone, somehow, will make it happen. Probation officers, who are already overstretched and under- resourced, are expected to monitor compliance, enforce restrictions and manage breaches. The Bill provides no guidance on how that will operate. How will it work?

The Bill was not in the manifesto, which referred only to sentences that

“make sense either to victims or the wider public”.

The proposals in the Bill do neither. They will undermine public confidence in the justice system—confidence that is already eroded by early release schemes, court delays, and prison overcrowding and escapes. Every element of the Bill points in one direction: leniency driven by necessity. We suggest that that is not how to develop important policy. The prisons are indeed overcrowded, and previous Governments have failed to manage that successfully, but the public expect that those who break the law will be dealt with properly and punished, and that those who pose a threat will be detained. However, henceforth, an offender could serve one-third of a sentence, breach licence conditions, be recalled and still be re-released early.

Only yesterday, or the day before, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner sounded the alarm and wrote to the Lord Chancellor. Under Part 2 of the Bill, as the Domestic Abuse Commissioner pointed out, offenders recalled to custody will now be automatically re-released after just 56 days, with no review by the Parole Board. This will include convicted abusers after recall for contacting or stalking their victims, yet they will go back into the community with no fresh assessment of danger. This is complacency. It places victims at avoidable risk.

The Bill requires rigorous scrutiny. It blurs the line between rehabilitation and release. It hands judicial powers to the Probation Service and places public protection second to administrative convenience. We are not told how it will be funded. We are told it is modernisation. In truth, it is a risky experiment with public safety.

We on this side will carefully examine every clause in Committee. Our position is clear: sentencing exists to protect the public, to deter crime and to deliver justice to victims, and it is for judges. The Bill fails on all those counts.