King’s Speech

Baroness Hyde of Bemerton Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)]

I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich for an important and moving maiden speech. The first person in her family to stay in education after 16, this tenacious Teessider has a lot to offer your Lordships’ House. When Bishop of Stepney, she was my amazing friend Reverend Alexandra’s boss, and it was following the untimely death of Reverend Alexandra’s husband, my wonderful friend Michael, that I learned that the right Reverend Prelate was at the vicarage with a bottle of gin for my newly widowed friend. When asked who was there, she simply said, “It’s Joanne”, showing her trademark humility, care and—frankly, with that bottle of gin—practicality.

She did not falter in the difficult and complex task of being the lead bishop for safeguarding. She continues as deputy leader for safeguarding and is an exemplary agent for culture change via stronger governance and processes. Having seen first hand the devastating impact of safeguarding failures, I wish her all the best in those important endeavours. I look forward to seeing the right reverend Prelate bring the rigour and compassion that have characterised her 26 years in ordained ministry to your Lordships’ House in years to come.

I very much welcome the measures outlined in the gracious Speech to improve the justice system, whether that is via changes to policing or the expedition of justice by the measures outlined in the courts modernisation Bill. It is clear that 14 years of austerity, neglect and, frankly, a lack of courage to pursue the evidence had left our justice system, from police to courts, prisons and probation, in a sorry mess. I am sorry that we have heard so much in this debate about the changes to jury systems and so little about what happens after people are incarcerated by the state.

We are all too aware, in these times, of the threat posed from outside the country and the arguments for increased defence spending to protect society, and this can be to the detriment and neglect of arguments for funding commensurate with ensuring safety for people currently inside our country, both those in our prisons and in wider society. If we cannot keep people in prison safe, how can we hope to achieve any of the other more lofty goals of recovery from addiction, education, rehabilitation, skills and training? This is about pragmatism. We do not just send people away to become non-people, never to be heard of again; we send people somewhere. We send them to prison.

Indeed, there is legislation in the gracious Speech, in the national security Bill, which will tackle the rise of accessing violent material online. This will lead to even more people being imprisoned under that legislation—but what happens then? In some cases, these prisons, smaller ones with less staff turnover, are able to help people effectively repair their lives in a variety of ways, tackling root causes. But, in too many cases, despite the best efforts of hard-working prison staff, they do not. Those prisons become a criminogenic factor in themselves. Being safe in custody is not about having an easy life—some tabloid fantasy. It is about the hard reality of prison and making it a safe place for people to live and work. In 2025, there were 79 self-inflicted deaths in prisons in England and Wales. The rate of self-harm was 837 per 1,000 prisoners. One in three women in prison self-harmed in 2025, and they were nine times more likely than men to do so.

There are all kinds of people in our prisons, as was recently vividly brought to life by James Graham’s play “Punch”, an adaptation of Jacob Dunne’s memoir about his 2011 manslaughter conviction following a single fatal punch. These people in prison could be my child or my neighbour; they are not just faceless people. Safer prisons lead to safer societies and I know that my noble friend the Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending is deeply committed and is managing to turn things round. I am proud of those achievements, yet there is still a way to go. We cannot hope to deliver this Labour Government’s bold, landmark commitments, including halving violence against women and girls, without functioning prisons and probation, without safe prisons that are equipped not just to do that basic thing of keeping people alive but to enable people to live again and to contribute to society. Therefore, I urge the same commitment in this parliamentary Session to pursuing domestic and indeed prison safety as we are showing on the international front.