Controlling or Coercive Behaviour: Sentencing

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Mundell. My constituency has one of the highest numbers of signatures on today’s petition, showing a clear desire to support Paris Shears’s campaign. I am pleased to be here to show my support and urge the Government to put victims at the heart of every stage of their approach to tackling domestic abuse.

In Cambridgeshire last year, 16% of all recorded crimes were related to domestic abuse. There were 59 arrests per 100 such crimes, and 31 cases of domestic abuse per 10,000 females were deemed high-risk enough to be discussed at multi-agency risk-assessment conferences. Those are deeply concerning statistics. We all want to reduce those figures to zero, so it is alarming that virtually none of them has significantly reduced in Cambridgeshire in the past five years.

Particularly pertinent to today’s debate is the number of high-risk cases that are repeat issues. In Cambridgeshire, 38% of cases are repeatedly discussed at multi-agency risk assessment conferences, compared with 29% nationally. Our area has been consistently above average in this regard for the past five years. It may be that higher repeat referrals reflect agencies getting better at spotting repeat victimisation—I hope that that is part of it—but those figures also suggest that too many of the most serious cases are coming back around and that something in the system is allowing the cycle to continue.

The idea at the centre of the debate—sentence reductions for guilty pleas—is good in theory. There is a huge court backlog, which has worn away public confidence in the criminal justice system and has allowed criminals to get away with their offences. A graduated system of sentence reduction provides little reward to the offender for waiting to change their plea and speeds up proceedings where a guilty verdict may have been reached anyway, but in Paris’s case and in so many others, the unique and insidious nature of domestic abuse means that what should be a way of clearing the case backlog for simple cases has been repurposed by abusers into a tool to maintain control over their victim until the very last minute. We cannot let that continue.

The Sentencing Council’s guideline is clear about why a discount exists: a guilty plea normally reduces the impact of the crime on victims and spares them from having to give evidence. In most cases, that holds—even a late plea spares a victim the witness box—but coercive control is different because the wait itself is part of the harm. Every month for which a perpetrator maintains a not guilty plea is another month in which they shape their victim’s life. A guilty plea on the morning of the trial does not undo that; it is often the final act of control. The guideline’s assumption that a late guilty plea still benefits the victim simply does not fit these cases.

The law already gives courts room to recognise that. Section 73 of the Sentencing Act 2020 requires courts to consider not only the stage at which a guilty plea was indicated, but the circumstances in which it was given. Will the Minister ask the Sentencing Council to look specifically at how those circumstances are assessed in controlling or coercive behaviour cases and whether tactical delay by a perpetrator should reduce the discount or remove it altogether?

Paris’s campaign speaks to wider concerns about the lack of support in place for victims of domestic abuse, including controlling or coercive behaviour, throughout the judicial process. This goes beyond the criminal courts. Several constituents have contacted me about serious problems in, for example, the family courts, where victims are failed by irregularities in the provision of special measures. It was welcome that automatic eligibility for measures such as protective screens and curtains, support persons and private testimony was expanded to domestic abuse victims in 2021, but that counts for little if those measures are not actually in place on the day. In much the same way as we have discussed in relation to a last-minute guilty plea, the continual failure to put appropriate protections in place for victims when they attend court is simply allowing their abuse and emotional distress to continue. Has the Minister considered making special measures standard in courtrooms in order to ensure that no victim will ever be without them, and what does he think to recommending that proceedings be suspended where promised protections have failed to be put in place?

A 2021 report from the Victims’ Commissioner noted huge gaps in our understanding of the demand for and supply of special measures and recommended that the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office develop a national protocol for data collection. That protocol has been in place since 2024, and I would appreciate hearing how the data is being used to make improvements in the provision of those measures.

Victims need to be put first at every stage, and in every bit of guidance, through real measures to protect them both in court and outside it. The Government have committed to updating the controlling or coercive behaviour statutory guidance before the end of 2026, and I hope that they will keep that promise, for Paris and the thousands of others who are being and have been failed by the system.

Criminal Justice Reform

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

I totally agree. It is worth pausing and reflecting on what my hon. Friend has just said: someone who went to prison for a one-and-a-half-year sentence is still there 18 and a half years later. All of us should feel discomfort about that. It is right that we put the best possible support in place for those who are on that journey and passing Parole Board processes in order to attain their release from prison. For those who are not, we have to look at a way to bring IPP to a close. I am committed to working with colleagues to do so.

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s announcement of investment in the Probation Service. Will he lay out what the Government are doing specifically to fix the vetting delays and staff attrition problems that have kept levels broadly stable despite previous investment, and will he commit to a date by which Cambridgeshire and Peterborough will exit prioritisation?

[Alex Norris]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point about vetting. I heard from probation frontline leaders about cases that have taken them the thick end of a year, and the attrition rates as people go and get other jobs. We do not want to see that happen. Vetting must be done properly, and my hon. Friend the Prisons Minister and I are working with the Cabinet Office to improve it. On the specific point about Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, I will revert directly to him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jake Richards]

I thank the right hon. Member for her vital question. She is absolutely right. I will follow up on the correspondence that she sent to the Ministry of Justice—I have not seen that myself. As I set out before, the policy implemented by the MOJ is one that values the Welsh language and will continue to do so.

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

3. What steps he is taking to support the Probation Service.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Lammy)]

We are determined to back our hard-working probation staff by investing up to £700 million by the final year of the spending review and investing an initial £8 million in new technologies to reduce administrative burdens. We will also recruit 1,300 trainee probation officers in 2025-26, in addition to the more than 1,000 we recruited last year.

[Ian Sollom]

In July 2024, inspectors rated Cambridgeshire and Peterborough probation service inadequate, with major leadership failures and child safeguarding assessed as adequate in just 28% of cases. The action plan committed to increasing probation officer staffing by 87% by March 2026, but the National Audit Office has now revealed that the Probation Service has underestimated staffing requirements by 34%, which implies that the service in Cambridgeshire has been operating with only half the staff needed. Given that miscalculation, will the Secretary of State commit to revised, accurate staffing targets for Cambridgeshire, and reassure my constituents that child safeguarding will not be compromised as the service tries to manage with inadequate resources?

[Mr Lammy]

Cambridgeshire is a part of the country that I know well, having spent seven years of my life in Peterborough. I will look closely at this issue, and I will ask the Prisons Minister to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss how we move forward.