Sentencing Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, in welcoming this Bill, I am guided by the expert voices in your Lordships’ House, particularly those from the Cross Benches. As a relatively new Member of your Lordships’ House, I am well aware of the challenge of coming to terms with the detail and complexity of the fine points of law and lawmaking.

I particularly want to reflect on the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. He referred to the legislative morass in which this Bill is trying to find some clarity. That legislative morass is not a technical issue but very much a political one, and one on which I hope I can make some useful comments. I go back to the words of the Prison Reform Trust before the 2019 election. It called on party leaders to temper their language with regard to law and order so that sensitive issues of intense public concern were not exploited but were used to contribute to a reasonable and constructive public debate. Far too often, that is not what has happened around law and order issues. Very often we have seen politicians—certainly from the largest parties—competing to appear tough on crime, perhaps with “tough on the causes of crime” added as an afterthought. There have been easy responses to awful events: the creation of a new offence or a knee-jerk promise to increase penalties. Often this is deeply confusing as well as deeply destructive.

I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, about the evidence, particularly that around young men and how they are not necessarily in a position to react appropriately and should be managed differently. The fact is that our prison population has quadrupled in the past century, and half that increase has been since 1990. We have the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe. I do not believe there is any doubt at all that that makes our society worse, for all its members and all its futures.

I particularly want to take a short moment to focus on the work of a Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, who in 2007 wrote an internationally renowned report on women prisoners. It acknowledged that women prisoners are objectively different as a population. The majority are victims of domestic abuse, 48% committed their offence in relation to someone else’s drug use, half have drug issues themselves and 25% have a problem with alcohol. Then there are the non-offending victims: only 5% of children remain in the family home when their mothers are sent to prison. So there is no doubt that we need sentences to be clear and transparent, but we also need them to be humane.