Criminal Justice System: Capacity
Nusrat Ghani Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on capacity in the criminal justice system. When this Government came to power, we inherited prisons on the brink of disaster, moments from total collapse. Had that happened, the consequences would have been apocalyptic: courts would have been forced to cancel all trials, the police would have been barred from making arrests, and we would have faced the total breakdown of law and order.
The last Government knew what had to be done. My predecessor, the former Lord Chancellor, begged his Prime Minister to act, but rather than have the bravery to do so, the now Leader of the Opposition chose to call an election instead. As a result, it fell to this Government to take the necessary but difficult action. While they say that to govern is to choose, my predecessors left me with no choice at all.
On 18 July, just two weeks into the job, I announced to this House that we had been forced to bring forward the release dates of some prisoners serving standard determinate sentences from 50% of time served in prison to 40%, serving the rest on their sentence on licence in the community. Make no mistake: the action we took prevented the immediate collapse of law and order in our country, but with our prison population still rising fast, there is more that we must do to address the capacity challenges our prisons face, and our task now is to ensure that a crisis like the one we inherited can never happen again.
Today, I can set out a measure that will begin to address a specific and acute cause of our prisons capacity crisis: the remand population. As this House will know, prisoners on remand are in our jails but have not yet been tried or sentenced. Because of the historical backlog in our Crown courts—another element of the woeful inheritance my predecessors handed to me—the remand population in prisons has soared. Today, it stands at a record 17,000, which is nearly one in every five prisoners. As some Members will know, remand prisoners are an especially acute problem as they are placed in so-called reception or category B prisons. Until they are tried and sentenced, they cannot be moved elsewhere in the estate. It is in our reception prisons that we face the most acute capacity pressure in the country. Unless we address our remand population, we could still see a collapse of the system, not because of a lack of cells, but because we do not have those cells in the places we need them. It is therefore crucial that we bear down on the remand population.
Magistrates courts have sentencing powers for only up to six months’ imprisonment for a single triable either-way offence, and only the Crown court can hand down sentences beyond that. Between May 2022 and March 2023, the previous Government chose to extend magistrates court sentencing powers to 12 months. This enabled magistrates courts to retain more sentencing hearings and meant that they were heard more quickly. It also freed up capacity in the Crown court to hear more complex cases. However, magistrates’ sentencing powers were then reduced back to six months when, having failed to address the capacity crisis in our prisons, the pressure on prison places became too great.
This Government have now acted to relieve that pressure, so I can announce that we will extend magistrates’ sentencing powers back to 12 months’ imprisonment. On 28 October, I will lay a statutory instrument to that effect, which will come into force on 18 November this year. This change does not increase the maximum sentence for specific offences, and nor does it change the length of sentence that a defendant will serve. Instead, it expands which courts can hand down sentences of six to 12 months’ imprisonment for a single triable either-way offence. It will enable the system to make more use of magistrates, who are an integral part of our court system, delivering justice swiftly across the country.
This measure will also allow us to begin to address the remand problem in our prisons, but it will do more than that. This Government inherited a record Crown court backlog. Waits for trials have grown so long that some cases are not heard for years. The impact on victims of crime is profound. For some, justice delayed is, as the old saying goes, justice denied, as victims choose to withdraw from the justice process altogether rather than face the pain of a protracted legal battle. By extending magistrates’ powers, we will be able to make progress on addressing the Crown court backlog, and we will free the Crown court to take on more of the cases that only it can hear. This measure is expected to free up an equivalent of 2,000 sitting days within the Crown court each year, which will add capacity on top of the additional 500 sitting days that this Government funded on taking office.
This measure will, in total, see a slight increase in the overall prison population, but by bearing down on the remand population in our reception prisons, we will create capacity where we need it most. This measure allows us to manage our prison population smartly, and it means we can both address our prisons crisis and tackle the courts backlog.
When this Government came to power, we inherited a justice system in crisis. We took immediate action to avert a total breakdown of law and order. We are now beginning the work of ensuring that this country never faces this crisis again. There will be more that we must do. In the coming weeks, I will return to the House and set out our long-term plan for the justice system, but these new powers for magistrates mark an important step. They help us alleviate the capacity pressures caused by the historical remand population that we inherited, and begin to address the record Crown court backlog that my predecessors handed to me. In so doing, for victims across the country they will make justice swifter, and ensure that more criminals receive the punishment that they deserve. I commend this statement to the House.
Shabana Mahmood
It is almost as if the shadow Lord Chancellor was not, in fact, a Minister in the Ministry of Justice just a few short months ago. Let me remind him of a few salient facts. First, on Crown court sitting days, I will not accept any suggestion or allegation from him that this Government have cut sitting days or trials in the Crown court. That is entirely untrue. As he knows, or ought to know, perfectly well—I am sure he can check with the former Lord Chancellor—on 28 June, the last Government and the last Lord Chancellor determined how many days the judges could sit this year. Since then, this Government have increased the number of sitting days by 500. As there is clearly some confusion here, it is important that I set the record straight.
Every year, the Government and the judiciary agree a number of sitting days, and an overall budget to fund those sitting days, in what is known as the concordat process. In June, the judiciary reached an agreement with the former Lord Chancellor to sit 106,000 days in the Crown court, with a total budget of £275 million. It has become clear that there has been over-listing against that budget, with more trials scheduled than the funding allowed for. As a result, some cases have had to be delisted, although far fewer than some recent reporting has suggested—it was claimed that around 5,000 sitting days were being cancelled, and I know that the shadow Lord Chancellor had some other numbers in his remarks. In fact, as I understand it, the number is more like 1,600 sitting days. Although misleading reports have abounded, one thing is clear: the concordat process has not worked as it should. I can assure the House that the first concordat process on my watch will be very different, and such confusions will not occur again.
The shadow Lord Chancellor asked a number of questions relating to the impact assessment for the changes announced today. I will publish all the usual impact assessments when the statutory instrument is published. As I said in my opening remarks, we expect an initial impact on prison places, but over time we expect that to come down. We have a little more space in prisons because of the action we have taken to stabilise the pressure on prison places. It is a sensible measure to then take the opportunity to bear down on the Crown court backlog by providing the extra 2,000 sitting days that this change will allow, while also bearing down further on our remand population.
As the shadow Lord Chancellor will know, the exact numbers are difficult to model because listing is a matter for the judiciary. Some of those on remand will ultimately be found not guilty and some will be found guilty and sentenced, and the whole range of sentencing measures is available to the independent judiciary. But we expect to make some progress on the remand population and, crucially, to be able to move people from the reception estate into the rest of the prison estate, thereby helping us to make sure we have the prison places where we need them. I can also confirm that all of the 37 people released in error because of being incorrectly sentenced are now back in custody.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
As someone who spent a decade shadowing and scrutinising the previous Government’s justice policies, I sympathise with the Lord Chancellor over the chaos she has inherited, but the proposed changes to magistrates’ sentencing powers may have mixed results. They should ease the backlog in the Crown court, but they may put additional pressure on our overcrowded prisons. My concern is that we do not have robust data on the Crown court backlog or on the effects of varying sentencing. The Government are about to embark on a quick but thorough review of sentencing. Will they use that opportunity to get the policy and the figures lined up?
Shabana Mahmood
I think this is my first chance in the House to welcome my hon. Friend to his new position as Chair of the Justice Committee. Let me deal with Crown court data first. In fairness to the previous Government, they discovered this error prior to the conclusion of their term in office. When I came in, I was made aware of the issue with Crown court data. I ordered further investigation and examination of the issues. It is clear that a number of problems with the data—a number of errors and other issues—need to be resolved. We will make sure that it is published when we can be sure that it is accurate and that all those errors have been finally resolved.
Clearly, the situation is unacceptable. I am in discussion with the Lady Chief Justice about the need for a full external audit of Crown court data, because I think we can all agree that that data must be accurate. We clearly must do more to restore confidence in the reporting process, and I will update the House further in due course.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. So many of my constituents are appalled by the state in which the Conservatives have left our justice system: huge court backlogs, a woefully big remand population, overcrowded prisons and so many victims and survivors without justice. I therefore welcome her determination to arrest this problem and this decline, and especially the reports of her correspondence with the Prime Minister over a fully funded Ministry of Justice. However, I want to address some of the Liberal Democrats’ key concerns about some of the proposals that she has set out.
First, the Secretary of State recognised that there may be additional issues with prison capacity in the short term. With the system bursting at the seams and with us, a matter of weeks ago, just 100 men away from the prisons being completely full, how will she prevent our prisons from collapsing as a result of these measures?
Secondly, on prison effectiveness, putting too many eggs in the prisons basket will ultimately fail to keep our communities safe. We know that 75% of ex-offenders go on to reoffend within nine years of being released. From the work I did before I arrived in this place on getting kids out of crime and out of gangs, I know that rehabilitation, done holistically, is a critical way of reducing reoffending and victimhood. How will the Secretary of State double down on rehabilitation and through-the-gate mentoring programmes to reduce offending?
Thirdly, these measures will put more pressure on magistrates courts, at a time when many, such as my own in Eastbourne, have closed. That risks forcing victims of crimes currently heard in those courts to wait even longer for justice. How will the Secretary of State address that risk?
Finally, one of the worst Justice Secretaries in recent memory, Dominic Raab, tried a similar policy in 2022, with magistrates increasing the number of people being sent to prison on short sentences. The scheme was dropped after a year, and short-sentence reoffending rates are at 57%, which is a deplorable number. How will the Secretary of State avoid these measures backfiring in a similar way?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Just for reference, your questions should be two minutes, no longer.
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the hon. Member for his questions. I am very aware of the number of places in our prison estate, and we had a particularly difficult moment before the last bank holiday, in August, when we came down to fewer than 100. However, as a result of the measures we have taken on SDS40, there is now some space and some capacity in our prison system. It is important that we use this opportunity also to bear down on the remand population and to deal with the Crown court backlog.
This is a delicate balancing exercise, and it is one that I will personally be keeping a close eye on and keeping under review. However, I think that the measure we have announced is ultimately the right one, because it helps us with our prison capacity challenges. As a result, we will have the prison places where we need them—in the reception prisons—and we can start moving people out to other parts of the estate, which is not possible until cases are heard. I am confident that we have the capacity in the magistrates courts to deal with the additional workload. Again, I will be keeping that under review.
The hon. Member is right: 80% of offenders are actually reoffenders. This country has a real problem with failing to rehabilitate offenders, and our record on reducing reoffending is not as strong as it should be. Prison has a place, and it is really important that people who break our laws are properly punished. That is necessary for the public to maintain confidence in our system and for law-abiding citizens to feel that there are consequences when our laws are broken. There is no doubt in my mind that punishment and prison are important, but they go hand in hand with rehabilitation. I do not think there is a choice to be made between punishment and rehabilitation—they are two sides of the same coin, and we have to have both. This Government are determined to have a better track record on both punishment and rehabilitation compared with anything that has gone on in the previous 14 years.
Let me gently say that it is not the case that magistrates courts send more people to prison. Following the previous change the courts were able to run through cases faster, and because the previous Government had not created capacity in the prison estate, the pressure on prison places became acute and the measure had to be dropped back to six months—the shadow Lord Chancellor might wish to offer further comments on that. That is what happened and what I expect to happen again.
Criminal Law
Nusrat Ghani Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Shabana Mahmood
The public made the decision for the previous Administration by voting them out of office in such a stunning manner. We do have to win votes—it is a democracy, at the end of the day—but we must also govern the country in a way that does not risk the total collapse of the criminal justice system. It is a sign of the Tory party’s collective nervous breakdown in government that the risk of running the criminal justice system into the ground, with the total collapse of law and order in this country, was allowed to happen in the first place. This new Administration will never take such a risk, and we are taking these measures today to start putting things right and clean up the mess that we have inherited from the Tory party.
The last occupants of 10 Downing Street left our prisons in crisis. They left our criminal justice system at the point of collapse. They were the guilty men; I know the historical weight of those words, but they are apt. The last Government placed the country in unconscionable peril. This Government’s legacy will be different: a prison system brought under control, a Probation Service that keeps the public safe, enough prison places to meet our needs, and prisons, probation and other services working together to break the cycle of reoffending. Today’s measure is not the long-term solution—I am not pretending that it is; there is a hard road ahead of us—but it is the necessary first step.
Matt Vickers
There will be an opportunity to respond to me later.
As we know, many offences linked to dreadful domestic abuse and domestic violence do not appear to be among the Lord Chancellor’s exclusions, as the offence prosecuted would be, for example, a section 20 GBH or common assault. What does she say to victims of domestic abuse who are worried that the way in which the measure has been drafted risks allowing their attacker to benefit from her early release scheme? What percentage of those who are released when 40% of their sentence is served, rather than 50%, will be recalled back into prison for breaches? What steps is she taking to mandate the imposition of GPS tagging or other strict conditions on those who benefit from the measures? Again, there is no detail in the SI.
What additional resources are being made available to probation by September, when this early release scheme is due to start, over and above what was already put in place by the previous Government? The Lord Chancellor stated her plans for next March, but what about this September, when her scheme comes into play? How many additional staff will be in place in offender management units by September, to meet the demands of sentence and release-point recalculation? What additional funding is the Ministry of Justice making available to local authorities and other housing providers to meet the short to medium-term increase in demand for suitable accommodation in the coming months?
Last week, the Lord Chancellor confirmed her intention to temporarily fully close HMP Dartmoor. Where does she intend to find the places lost? More broadly, she asks the House to support the open-ended measures in the SI, but is yet to set out any detail of a long-term capacity plan—either how she will pay for and build more prison places over and above those we already committed to, or whether she will reverse the changes we made to toughen sentences for dangerous criminals. Which is it? What is the plan?
While we recognise the need to address immediate pressures in the prison system, we are deeply troubled by the lack of detail in this statutory instrument and its supporting documents, and by the huge gaps that appear to exist, which I have set out. A blank cheque is being asked for, and there is no sunsetting of this significant measure, and no ability to amend the instrument to include a sunset provision. I have highlighted examples of serious offences that appear not to be excluded, offences that can often be linked to domestic violence or wounding. The absence of such measures, and of clarity, mean that this instrument is drafted in a way that is deeply troubling. I look forward to the Lord Chancellor’s response and reassurances during her wind-up remarks.
Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your election and welcome you to your place as Deputy Speaker.
I welcome this motion from my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, who is taking the only realistic action open to her to deal with the critical issue of prison capacity, with our prisons projected to be overflowing by September. This is another failure by the former Conservative Government, the result of their continuously kicking the can down the road, rather than dealing with the issues at hand.
The current situation cannot come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the developments in criminal justice over the past 14 years. Prior to the election being called, I had the pleasure of serving for a second time on the Justice Committee, and on 22 May this year, in one of his last statements as Chair of the Committee, Sir Bob Neill KC said that
“Prisons are simply running out of space. My committee has long since warned of the dangers of successive Governments ignoring the rise in jail numbers, set against a workforce recruitment and retention crisis and a crumbling Victorian prison estate. Ministers and society must be prepared to invest in prison capacity and proper rehabilitation programmes as the current situation is unsustainable”.
That is the Conservative former Chair of the Justice Committee speaking. The warning signs were there a long time ago, but the failure to invest has meant that we are now reaping this bitter harvest. I welcome the prison building programme and the renewal programme mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, but in addition to the measures proposed in this motion, I would like to suggest some further measures that may reduce the prison population over a longer term.
The first measure is addressing court delays. In its report “Reducing the backlog in the Crown Court”, published in May this year, the National Audit Office found that at the end of December 2023, the outstanding Crown court caseload was 65,573, and 18,000 of those cases had been outstanding for a year or more. It also found that it took an average of 683 days from offence to completion of a case in the Crown court, and that a staggering 16,005 people were on remand as of the end of December 2023. One third were awaiting sentencing, and the remaining two thirds were awaiting trial. The remand population is the highest it has been in over 50 years. Those figures are truly shocking, and the issue of remand prisoners needs to be addressed urgently. The maxim that justice delayed is justice denied is certainly apt, and we should remember that delays in cases going to trial also have adverse impacts on the victims and witnesses.
One of the causes of the delay is a shortage of criminal barristers and duty solicitors, whose numbers have been in decline since 2018. In part, that has been due to a serious under-investment in our criminal justice system over the past two decades. I hope that we will soon see the investment we need in the criminal justice system from this Government. On court dates and the listing of trials, I very much hope that His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service gets smarter in how it uses time and space for court hearings.
The second point I wish to make is about reoffending, an issue that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has touched on. According the Ministry of Justice’s own figures from the last quarter for which stats are available, 33.4% of adults released from custody will go on to reoffend. That figure is way too high. As reoffending is so high, it should come as no surprise that a large number of people are being remanded for non-violent offences due to their repeat offending. Many of those repeat offenders will have underlying vulnerabilities, such as drug abuse, homelessness and mental health issues, which will not have been properly addressed. Unless there is a co-ordinated approach to tackling the causes of reoffending, we will see this endless revolving-door cycle in our criminal justice system that gives courts no option but to remand repeat offenders into custody. I know that my right hon. Friend is serious about taking action to address those issues, and I ask her to co-ordinate work with other Departments to help stop reoffending.
The final point I wish to focus on is imprisonment for public protection prisoners, who account for approximately 3,000 of the prisoners in our prisons. In its report on IPP prisoners, the Justice Committee said that
“Our primary recommendation is that the Government brings forward legislation to enable a resentencing exercise in relation to all IPP sentenced individuals…This is the only way to address the unique injustice caused by the IPP sentence and its subsequent administration, and to restore proportionality to the original sentences that were given.”
On previous occasions, I have made the point that dealing with IPP prisoners who have spent more time in prison than they should have would not only help reduce the prison population, but would right a wrong.
In conclusion, I very much welcome this motion as a short-term measure to deal with the overcrowding in our prisons. I also welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to an annual prison capacity statement, which will allow us to see what effect this measure and other measures have on the prison population. In addition to building more prisons, we need an investment in our criminal justice system, and greater recruitment and retention of barristers, solicitors, prison officers and probation officers. I was delighted to hear that my right hon. Friend has committed to recruiting 1,000 more probation officers. That will certainly help to address issues that arise among people who are on licence after serving half of their sentence. We need to clear the backlog of cases in the Crown court to allow remand prisoners to be dealt with sooner, and we also need to address the root causes of both offending and reoffending. Finally, we need to deal with IPP prisoners, and see what can be done to release those who are over tariff.
I hope that the motion will pass today; it is a very good start to tackling the Gordian knot that we face. Still more work needs to be done, but I have every confidence that the Lord Chancellor and her team will deliver.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your election, as well as the other Deputy Speakers, and welcome you to your place.
I would not go so far as to say that I welcome the measures that have been outlined today and what is being proposed, but I and the Liberal Democrats recognise that this is probably the only step that the Government can take to deal with the situation. We are looking to relieve pressure on prisons against a backdrop of concern that the prison population is rising beyond the operational capacity of the prison estate. Indeed, as of July 2024, the prison population in England and Wales was measured as 87,453, whereas operational capacity is 88,864. As Members have highlighted, reoffending rates remain high, with 75% of ex-inmates reoffending within nine years of release, and 39.3% reoffending within the first 12 months. It is estimated that reoffending costs our society more than £18 billion a year.
We should also recognise that violence against prison staff has soared as they cope with these capacity issues; an average of 23 attacks were recorded every day last year across England and Wales. Issues with staff recruitment and retention have persisted, with English prisons running red regimes due to falling below minimum staffing levels at least 22 times in 2023. It is right to recognise that the problem is partly due to the backlog in our criminal courts, which skyrocketed under the previous Conservative Government. I found the official Opposition’s response today quite stunning. We want to work as a constructive Opposition, so that we can help deal with issues around prison overcrowding, so for them to press the Lord Chancellor for answers when they know the answers—they knew them before the last election—is quite something. As of March 2024, remand populations have risen by 84% to a record high of over 16,000 people, accounting for almost 20% of the total prison population. It is quite clear that we need to take action on that issue. Back in November 2023, the previous Administration recognised the issues around prison overcrowding and introduced their own emergency measures, so surely they should recognise today that further measures are necessary.
This is about our criminal justice system as a whole, and trust in our criminal justice system as a whole is at an all-time low. The new Government talk about being a Government of service. I was a police officer for 12 years, and I consider that to be part of the public service I have given. I want to mention the shocking footage from Manchester airport yesterday. As a former police officer, I was deeply disturbed by what I saw. I also want to share my concern and thoughts for the families of the two police officers and the members of the public who were seriously injured in a car accident on the M8 outside Glasgow yesterday.
The issues facing the Lord Chancellor are not limited to England and Wales. Indeed, the Scottish Human Rights Commission has today published a report criticising the Scottish Government’s “glacial pace of change” in tackling overcrowding, suicides and mental health provision in our prisons. Only last month, the Scottish Government were making decisions similar to those being made by this Government in relation to releasing prisoners earlier. Although, as with this Government, there are exceptions to that overall approach, I absolutely understand the concerns of victims in seeing the early release of those who have offended against them, and that is something we must continue to recognise.
Although the Government have outlined that there will not be a sunset clause in the SI, and that they are looking to bring this to an end in 18 months’ time, I would appreciate some clarity from the Lord Chancellor on reporting to this place on the progress being made. This House can estimate whether the situation continues to be an emergency only if we have the data and are aware of the effect of what is being proposed today.
We need to ensure that what the Government are doing is the right thing, but we also need to know what further steps they are taking. We must address the systemic issues in the criminal courts, because these failures are failing victims on convictions in the first place. The Probation Service is also a critical part of this. I want to add that I watched the maiden speech in the other place of the new Minister for Prisons, Parole and Probation, and I was encouraged by what I heard. The Liberal Democrats are clear that cutting reoffending must be at the heart of the Government’s plans to end the prison crisis.
We know that prisons are in crisis—they are overcrowded and understaffed, and they are failing to rehabilitate offenders—but in order to prevent and reduce reoffending we need to ensure that we are improving the provision of training, education and work opportunities in prisons. We should be considering a through-the-gate mentorship programme and introducing a plan to improve the rehabilitation of people leaving prison. The Liberal Democrats want to implement a presumption against short sentences of 12 months or less to facilitate that rehabilitation in the community.
As the Minister in the other place recognised yesterday, if we do not have the right conditions in our prisons, we are only making our prisons a place where people learn how to reoffend, rather than preventing it. We need the Probation Service to have the resources it needs. We need to improve and properly fund the supervision of offenders in the community, with far greater co-ordination between the Prison Service, Probation Service providers, the voluntary and private sectors, and local authorities, and that will achieve savings in the high costs of reoffending.
The Liberal Democrats recognise that this is the only option the new Government can take. As I say, I would not go as far as to say that I support what is being proposed, but I recognise on behalf of my party that it is the only option left to the Government at this time.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
It is a genuine pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker—congratulations on your new role. I welcome the new Front Benchers to their positions, including the Lord Chancellor, whom I have known for a number of years. I congratulate her on taking up the post, as well as the Opposition Front-Bench team.
It is right—this has marginally been touched on—that the first duty of any Government is the protection, safety and security of the public. The state has to manage many measures, sentences and crimes, and collectively we have a duty to ensure that the British public are protected. Alongside robust measures on counter-terrorism and backing our armed forces, we also have amazing intelligence services that form part of the matrix that the Lord Chancellor will now become familiar with, as well as keeping our streets safe by investing in the police and the criminal justice system. Part of that means that the most dangerous, harmful, serious, persistent offenders should be in prison and kept off the streets in order to keep the public safe, and it is important that we have the right deterrent.
Those on the Government Front Bench are clearly making a great deal of play about the role of the previous Government and the decisions made in the last Parliament, but it is telling that one of the first pieces of legislation that this Government are seeking to pass is one that basically considers the early release of 5,500 prisoners in a matter of weeks. I have looked at the impact assessment—the Lord Chancellor will be familiar with it—and I note that it gives option 0 and option 1. I understand the situation that she has been asked to look at, but in her closing remarks I would like to hear what alternatives were considered, other than the blanket scheme.
The Lord Chancellor touched on the previous Parliament, and for the record, in the previous Parliament we saw Labour MPs campaigning to block the removal of foreign national offenders from being deported from our prisons. We saw them oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the tougher sentences that were introduced for sexual and violent offenders— I will come on to the release of some of those offenders shortly. Labour Members opposed life sentences for people smugglers in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which we know is making a difference. The release of 5,500 prisoners, and reducing the time that most offenders stay in custody from 50% of their sentence to 40%, will cause concern for the public, particularly victims of crime.
I would like to ask the Lord Chancellor about some specific areas. She has touched on them, but I would like her to expand on them. In the early release provisions, clear offences such as sexual or domestic abuse offences have been listed in the schedule. She has outlined community orders and tagging, but it is important, particularly for women who have been victims, to know and understand what provisions will be put in place for them. There are also offenders responsible for racially aggravated assaults, and the real harm that comes with offenders with past convictions for sexual offences or perpetrators of domestic abuse, who might be serving time in custody for other offences and who could be freed early.
What we know—the Lord Chancellor will know this—is that those types of perpetrators do not just offend once; they have a whole litany of historical aggravated offences. We cannot simply release those people out into the community, because those blanket offences do cause problems. She is well aware of the cross-party nature of the debate on support for victims over the past decade. I have spoken about a victims Bill, as has she, and it is about how we can work to achieve that.
There will of course be impacts on wider services—this has already been raised, in particular by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain)—and I would like to ask about the impact on our police, probation and housing services. There is no clear plan in the impact assessment. The Lord Chancellor said in her statement that that will come and that officials are working “at pace”—I have no doubt that Opposition Members will hear a lot of that term from those on the Government Benches. The papers published with this order give no indication of how local authorities, and which local authorities, will be particularly affected by the early release scheme. It is important for local authorities, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in particular, to publish that information with the Ministry of Justice.
The Lord Chancellor has spoken passionately about the transparency she will bring on data releases and numbers, and I urge that we should have that information sooner rather than later. A Labour Member also mentioned homelessness that results from this measure, particularly in the City of London, and we see that already. That is a local authority duty, and statutory duties are in place where we know such things need to be managed. There will be, and already are, pressures on housing stock, and asking the Government to publish a list of local authorities that will be affected is vital. There are also implications for families and individuals on housing registers who will now be worried about the implications for them while they have been waiting patiently on housing lists.
There will be pressures on other parts of the criminal justice system. What resources will we put into the criminal justice system? Will resources be redirected? What about police officers who will now be tied up monitoring offenders on early release, and dealing with those who reoffend? The right hon. Lady has already spoken about reoffending and breaches of conditions that will mean someone going back to prison, but how will that be managed when police officers will be taken away from policing activities? Perhaps I may politely say that clarity is required on such specificity for local authorities and police forces, and our police and crime commissioners will also want to know more about this.
I would like to press the Lord Chancellor on the timings around this decision. It has been touched on already, and the impact assessment states:
“The Lord Chancellor announced her intention for this change to be temporary. This change will be reviewed after 18 months to ensure it is still necessary.”
It would be helpful to be indicative about the concept of the sunset clause—she is familiar with sunset clauses; we have all debated such legislation—and to be clear that this measure will not be permanent. The public, as well as Members of this House, need to be assured on that. Indeed, all Members who are voting today need assurance on that important point.
I wish to ask about the reduction in the prison population by 5,500. The impact assessment considers a period over 10 years, and states:
“The Central scenario assumes there will be 5,500 fewer prison places required than would otherwise be needed in steady state… Over a 10-year period, the average annual savings for HMPPS due to reduced prison running costs are estimated to be £219.5m per annum (2024/25 prices)… Over the ten-year period, there would be a transitional benefit of reducing the additional number of prison places that need to be constructed, with an estimated benefit of”
over £2.2 billion. That is significant money, and will clearly have an impact on the prison building programme.
When the Lord Chancellor made her first speech on prison capacity and the strains, she spoke from the new Five Wells prison in Wellingborough, which was built and delivered under the last Government. It would be useful to hear more about the implications of that £2.2 billion. We heard during the general election that the Government were to continue with the prison building plans and programmes put in place, and change the planning laws, but the impact assessment assumes that there will be a permanent reduction in the prison population of 5,500. I would like to hear more about the modelling of future prison places and numbers. Will there be an expansion of existing prison sites? There were plans for a super prison in Lancashire. Will that be expanded?
Alongside that, we need to understand more about the financial impact of this policy and how the Ministry of Justice, the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility will be scoring this measure in the accounting. The impact assessment suggests a saving of more than £2 billion by reducing the number of prison places to be constructed, as well as more than £200 million a year of savings by reducing the number of offenders in prisons. It is a balancing act, but for clarity, when it comes to law and order, the Government’s direction of travel on keeping our streets safe and the points I have made, we need to know from the Lord Chancellor whether these savings will be banked for the forthcoming fiscal forecast from the Ministry of Justice, the Treasury and the OBR, especially with the Budget and the comprehensive spending review coming in the autumn.
The Government have afforded the House 90 precious minutes to debate the early release of 5,500 prisoners. From where I stand, the prison building programme, just by this impact assessment, looks as if it is being reduced and cut. I am worried that will put the public in grave danger, and it is right that we continue throughout debates—probably post recess, now—to discuss this matter. This is one of the first legislative acts of this Government. It will have implications for public confidence in law and order. I do not need to expand on that; the Lord Chancellor is well-versed in all this. We have to be cognisant of the impact and what this measure means for victims. We should focus on that and the wider functioning of the criminal justice system.
The Lord Chancellor will know that in the previous Parliament, Operation Soteria in particular looked at the integration of policing, the criminal justice system, the court system and the prison system to give confidence to victims of the most abhorrent sexual abuses. Will this proposal have a knock-on impact on some of those key programmes? I would like to have some answers from the Lord Chancellor. Transparency is important, and she has spoken about it in this debate. I have grave concerns, as I know do others on the Opposition Benches, about public safety and security, as well as the wider implications for housing, prisons, probation, the police, law and order, and public safety.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have only three brief points to make.
First, we need an honest debate in this place about the purpose of prison. It is true that prison exists to protect those who otherwise might suffer harm—we incarcerate people because they are dangerous—but prison also matters for the reason of punishment. To incarcerate somebody who has done something wrong is to deprive them of their liberty to punish them. We should be straightforward that most of our constituents believe in just retribution. They do not spend their time, like so much of the liberal establishment does, agonising about the circumstances of criminals; they are more concerned about the circumstances of victims. Prison works for that reason above all else. It is a deprivation of liberty, endured by those who deserve to endure it. My constituents, and I suspect those of Members from all parts of the House, will be outraged by the idea that some of those people will now be let loose on our streets.
I accept that there are exceptions set out in the proposals before the House, but I have to say that had the previous Government introduced this measure, I would have voted against it, and I will vote against it today. I tabled amendments along with the former Home Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), and many other colleagues that would have further altered these provisions. I will not go into those in detail, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I suspect you would not allow me to do so, but I advise the new Lord Chancellor to take a look at them to see what further steps can be taken to mitigate this unfortunate circumstance, for that is the least we can do.
My second point is about the specifics of this proposal. It has already been said that the way of dealing with the prison population is twofold in essence. One is to reduce the number of people on remand by improving the throughput of people from arrest to trial. The second is to reduce the population by dealing with foreign national offenders. Remand prisoners represent about 20% of the population. Foreign national offenders now number, as the Lord Chancellor will know, in the many thousands. We can take people out of the system by doing those two things, and we can also build more prisons. I accept that the previous Government should have done more, but this Government should look at urgent prison building. We were able to build Nightingale hospitals at a stroke, so why can we not have Fry prisons built as at least a temporary measure to accommodate people who would otherwise commit further crimes?
My final point, which has been made repeatedly— I am being brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I know you will want me to be so, and I want to support you as much as I can in your new role—is simply this: if this is a temporary provision, as the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) just said, why is there no sunset clause? It is all very well saying there will be a review in 18 months, but a sunset clause would mean that the measure had to come back to this House for further consideration. That is the difference between something written in the legislation and something promised in the form of a review.
I have no reason not to believe the promises of the Lord Chancellor—I take them at face value—but let us have some substance around those promises by building a sunset clause into the legislation. That would, at the very least, show the good faith that is a necessary component of good governance. Prison works. Let us build more prisons and say to our constituents that we will no longer pander to the predilections, preoccupations and prejudices of the liberal establishment, but will instead speak for them, for what they believe is what I believe: many more wicked people should be incarcerated for much longer. That is what they would say on the doorstep in any constituency; it is about time that it was said here, and I am delighted that it now has been—by me.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Ghani)
I call the Lord Chancellor to make her closing remarks.