Criminal Court Reform

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I can reassure my noble friend that the consultation has been extensive. That does not necessarily mean that they agree with us or that all of them agree with us, although I observe—I say this as a practising criminal barrister myself—that it is a profession known for its caution; it is not always, shall we say, ready to adopt new ideas in particular ways. I am confident that once this system has had an opportunity to bed in, everyone will see the advantages.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. If the Government are serious about wanting to reduce delays and backlogs in the Crown Courts, they should stop creating so many new criminal offences. In the Crime and Policing Bill alone, there are 65 new criminal offences. At the Free Speech Union, we have analysed Ministry of Justice data from 2017 to 2025, comparing the acquittal rates for those charged with speech crimes in jury trials with those for non-jury trials. The results are quite startling. For all offences, Crown Courts have acquitted 21.6% of defendants in the last eight years, compared with just 11.4% in magistrates’ courts. However, for speech-related offences, the acquittal rate in jury trials rises to 27.6%, compared with 15.9% in the magistrates’ courts. In the last three years, juries have been even more likely to find defendants not guilty of speech crimes—32.1%, compared with 14.1%. To protect free speech, will the Minister urge the Justice Secretary to retain the right to trial by jury for those accused of speech offences?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord and pay tribute to his work in relation to freedom of speech, which is important to all of us. However, as I said in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, we are not having carve-outs for particular kinds of offences or defendants. It would create a raft of unfairness and make the system so complicated that it would not be possible to run it.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st December 2025 Lords Chamber

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

I entirely agree with the noble Lord and the noble Baroness about the collection of data. What I am concerned about is the mandatory publication of all data, which risks being misused.

The noble Lord is quite right to suggest that my party supported Lammy. Indeed, I spent some time in this Chamber in debates on the sentencing guidelines Bill reminding the House of the Lammy Review on the inequality of outcomes based on ethnicity. That is quite different from saying that every single offence needs to be reported on and published, which can lead to unfortunate reporting.

Turning to Amendment 93B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, like the noble Viscount, Lord Hogg, not only did I agree with almost every word she said, but I agreed with it profoundly in the sense of the benefits of participation in education, training and purposeful activity. I just have some concern about the use of the word “mandatory”.

In principle, all those things are sensible and beneficial for all the reasons that the noble Baroness gave. However, as we in this House know, many prisoners are struggling with addiction and mental health issues and some with problems of aging and illness. For those prisoners, the prospect of education, training, work and purposeful activity may be nugatory. I worry about too much use of “mandatory” in these contexts without consideration of all the effects. What is important, as it was in the last group when we considered probation, is flexibility and a personal approach so that offenders are dealt with having regard to their personal needs. That is an additional point to the one made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hogg, who talked about the availability of particular training opportunities—which were important as well.

On Amendment 127, I say yes to transparency of the Parole Board. Generally, the proceedings of the Parole Board should be public, should be heard and should be considered. Reporting of them is a good thing. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that there may be material that needs to be private. In these hearings, some discretion must be applied to enable the Parole Board to receive and take note of material that should not necessarily be made public. The hearing should make that decision. However, in general, the principle of transparency is one with which I and my party agree.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 86, in the names of my noble friend Lord Jackson and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and will respond briefly to some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, just made in opposing that amendment.

It might be relevant here to consider the interim guidance published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council on 13 August, following consultation with the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service, to encourage police forces to disclose the ethnicity and nationality, although not the immigration status, of suspects charged in high-profile cases. That interim guidance is currently the subject of a consultation being carried out by the College of Policing, which is trying to decide whether to make the guidance permanent or to withdraw it. The Runnymede Trust and other charities have written an open letter to the Home Secretary and the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council making many of the same arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, made, opposing the interim guidance that publishing the ethnicity and nationality of suspects in serious high-profile criminal cases is dangerous, that it can lead people to draw the wrong conclusions and that it can fuel the rise of populist parties and so forth.

However, the reason for the introduction of this interim guidance was the speculation and misinformation about the suspect in the Southport attacks in the summer of 2024. The object of advising the police to publish information about ethnicity and nationality of suspects in high-profile criminal cases is precisely to avoid people speculating in that way and drawing the wrong conclusion, giving them the information to fill the vacuum that would otherwise be filled by speculation. The same arguments can be made in favour of Amendment 86. If the courts—

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

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I invite him to clarify whether his objection to what I was saying is restricted to high-profile criminal cases, to which he has referred, or does he support the amendment in so far as it covers every case in the Crown Court and every case in the magistrates’ courts?

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I support the amendment and do not think it is excessive to require the publication of this data in every case. Would the noble Lord approve Amendment 86 if it was amended, whereby it was just information about convictions in high profile cases that the amendment was asking to be published? Is the noble Lord’s objection just to the extent of the information required to be published, or does he object to any information being published?

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

The noble Lord sits down expecting a reply from me, and he will get one. It is that there is and ought to be a discretion about this sort of publication. To have a mandatory requirement for the recording of all information in every case—and it may be that it also goes to some high-profile cases—is to tie the hands of what is published in an unreasonable way. It may be that, in a lot of cases, publication is plainly in the public interest and should happen. I accept and agree that there should be the fullest possible recording, and then publication is a matter for the department.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

The risk of requiring Crown Courts to publish information in only some cases, but not all cases, and to expect the Crown Courts to exercise discretion, is that it could lead to public suspicion that they are suppressing data for precisely the sorts of reasons that the noble Lord articulated earlier: that it might lead to the rise in support for populist parties.

If the concern is that the publication of data showing the number of serious offences committed by people according to country of birth, nationality, ethnicity or immigration status might fuel a rise in populism, then surely the cause would be the fact that a disproportionate number of criminal offences are being committed by members of certain groups, not the fact that that information is being published. The concealment of that information and the refusal to publish it, or the concealment of some of the information, would, I fear, lead to greater public suspicion, speculation and, indeed, misinformation.

The argument made by the chief constables is that the public need to know this information if we are to avoid the kind of speculation and misinformation that fuelled the disorder in the summer of 2024. The famous Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, said the best remedy for false and misleading speech is “not enforced silence” but more and better speech. Sunlight in these cases is the best disinfectant.

[Baroness Porter of Fulwood (Con)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 93B in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.

It is well established that the literacy and numeracy rates for those who end up committing crime are much lower than those in the general population. A Ministry of Justice report into prison education found that 57% of adult prisoners taking initial assessments had literacy levels below those expected of an 11 year-old.

In his review, David Gauke explicitly references the use of purposeful activity in the Texan system and positive engagement with it as being linked to serving less time inside prison; yet under these reforms there is no such requirement. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has already referenced Charlie Taylor’s assessment of the current system. David Gauke also points out in his review just how much of a problem access to these services is in many of our prisons:

“His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ annual report for 2022-2023 found that standards of purposeful activity were rated poor or insufficiently good in all but one of the adult male prisons inspected”.


Despite the measures in the Bill, there will still be a growing prison population. This will make delivering these services even more challenging, but it has to be addressed. We need to make sure that people who are spending time in prison are spending it as constructively as they can. Focusing on this and prioritising resource to help reduce the chances of people reoffending is the best way of reducing crime over the longer term. I would argue accountability and mandatory requirements are what ultimately drive how we place resources.

Prisons: Early Release

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords—

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his wise words, and for recognising that we could all do with a quiet period. We are all looking forward to the Recess in 48 hours’ time.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in the Free Speech Union and apologise for accidentally omitting to do so at Oral Questions yesterday. It was my first ever Oral Question, and I hope noble Lords will forgive the omission.

I want to ask the Minister for his assurance about another two-tier justice risk; namely, the work that the Government have embarked upon to come up with an official definition of Islamophobia that they then recognise and incorporate into guidance. Can he reassure the House that that definition will not be incorporated into any advice given by the College of Policing to the police in England and Wales, nor in any official advice produced by the CPS, nor in advice given to the Courts and Tribunals Service, and that once the definition has been adopted, it will mean that anti-Muslim hatred is not treated any differently by the police, courts or tribunals from anti-Sikh hatred, anti-Hindu hatred or, indeed, anti-Christian hatred?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his second question. As I have said previously, the Lord Chancellor is committed to doing a full review of policies to ensure that none of them contradicts the important principles of equality before the law.