John Hayes
Main Page: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)Department Debates - View all John Hayes's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Sentencing Bill
John Hayes ExcerptsTuesday 21st October 2025
(2 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Sentencing Bill 2024-26 View all Sentencing Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 21 October 2025 - (21 Oct 2025)
Esther McVey
Rehabilitation is key, but so is prison. Prison for people who have committed crimes is essential. Prisons are about removing a danger from society.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
We hear a lot about rehabilitation from Labour Members, and we hear a lot about recidivism. The most likely spur for recidivism is letting people out who will continue to do harm. We will be told by the Government that those people are being let out on licence, so will my right hon. Friend invite the Minister to predict how many people will be recalled while they are on licence? The Justice Secretary has already described that number as being too high, but will it rise as a result of these measures?
Esther McVey
My right hon. Friend makes his point clear. The Minister was listening, and I hope that he will answer that question in his remarks.
People cannot seriously think it is acceptable for those who commit offences involving firearms or ammunition, or even those who commit terror-related offences, to be eligible for a suspended sentence, but as things stand, those offences would be covered by the Bill. My new clauses 51 and 53 would amend that ludicrous position, and new clause 52 would exclude burglars. We do not see nearly enough burglars in court, because of a lack of detection of their crimes, so the ones we do see in court should routinely go to prison, not be spared jail, as they would be under these measures.
New clauses 43 and 45 would mean that those assaulting our dedicated police officers or emergency workers would not be eligible for suspended sentences; they are eligible for them under this Bill, and that is an absolute disgrace. When the Government were in opposition, they made a huge noise about how those who assault emergency workers, police officers and prison officers should be sent to prison. For example, the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant) introduced a private Member’s Bill that became the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, under which the maximum prison sentence for assault on an emergency worker was increased from six months to 1 year.
Part of the problem is that all too often people do not feel that there will be justice at the end of the process. When in opposition, the right hon. Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) said:
“the attitude…sadly exists across the criminal justice system…that being punched or kicked is somehow to be expected and accepted....we will never accept that people should be assaulted while they are doing their job and we will do everything in our power to protect them.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 1150.]
The hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) said:
“We must put legislation in place to guarantee that a tough line will be taken on anyone who assaults an emergency worker.”—[Official Report, 27 April 2018; Vol. 639, c. 1172.]
That is what Government Members said when they were in opposition, but they are ensuring the exact opposite now; these offenders will be let out on a suspended sentence. I cannot believe that Government Members would not join me in voting for new clause 43. I would like to test the will and the temperature of the House on that matter, and I will not back down on that.
The presumption in the Bill against immediate custody will also apply to those committing a host of other nasty, violent and sexual crimes, all of whom will be eligible for these get-out-of-jail-free suspended sentences, if they are sentenced to 12 months or less for their crimes. New clause 50 would mean that offences with a mandatory minimum sentence would not be included in the Bill; that would alleviate the damage in some cases.
New clause 54 would exclude from mandatory suspension sentences that can be appealed for being unduly lenient. The unduly lenient sentence scheme covers sexual offences; stalking; putting someone in fear of violence, serious harm or distress; controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship; and inflicting grievous bodily harm or unlawful wounding, among other offences. It would be nonsense for crimes included among the most serious under the scheme to be dealt with by way of a suspended sentence, instead of immediate custody. How would the measures in the Bill work on appeal? Would all sentences be overturned as being unduly lenient, or would the new law trump that scheme? My new clause would inject a bit of common sense and avoid all these questions.
My other amendments mainly concern the past of the offender. It is bad enough that a first-time offender who has committed a serious crime will avoid prison, but it is outrageous that under the Bill, serial offenders will be rewarded for reoffending. New clause 46 would mean that any offender who has committed three or more offences in the preceding 12 months would not be eligible for a mandatory suspended sentence, and new clause 47 would stop them from qualifying if they had committed 10 or more offences previously. People are committing multiple offences, yet the Government are letting them off with a suspended sentence.
Andy Slaughter
I do agree with that, and in a moment I will talk about a new clause that deals specifically with tagging. I am rattling through my speech because I have a lot to get through, but what I am specifically talking about in relation to domestic abuse is simply the need for there to be due process. That is something that I think we all want to see. Amendments 30 and 31 would ensure that the requirements of clause 6, which are important in allowing police and probation services to track perpetrators of domestic abuse, are carried out in a manner that is as thorough and fair as possible.
My next amendment, amendment 32, relates to clause 35, which amends the sentencing code to allow for the publication of the photographs and names of offenders serving community sentences. The explanatory notes say very little about this clause, but the justification in the memorandum on human rights suggests that the Government believe that this measure will have a deterrent effect on criminals, although there is little evidence for that assertion. The measure engages the article 8 right to private and family life for the individual, their victims and their family. Some concerns have been raised about how this measure can be operated safety in the modern social media age, in which photographs and names can be readily and quickly shared.
My amendment would prevent clause 35 from being brought into force until the Secretary of State has issued a code of practice to providers of probation services about how to take and publish photographs lawfully in the light of the Human Rights Act 1998 and data protection legislation. Before issuing a code of practice, the Secretary of State must consult providers of probation services, lay a draft before Parliament, and obtain the approval of both Houses. That would ensure proper parliamentary oversight of this measure.
Sir John Hayes
The hon. Gentleman is indicating his diligence—as though any evidence of that were required—in tabling these technical but important amendments. However, will he deal with the fundamental issue? As he has just said, the Criminal Justice Act 2003—from memory, section 250—allows criminals who are released on licence to be subject to all kinds of conditions, but the truth is that if we let more dangerous people out, more people will be recalled, because they will do immense amounts of harm. Recalls are going to go up as a result of this legislation, and many more people are going to suffer because of those who are let out early.
Andy Slaughter
I have quite a lot to say about recall, which I will come to in a moment, but I have reflected on this question. Licence is an established part of the criminal justice system, as indeed is probation. Almost every prisoner, other than a handful of the most serious criminals, comes out of prison at some stage. The issue of public safety when people are released from prison is one that this Bill is trying to address. We may disagree on the means to that objective, but I am sure we agree on the objective itself.
I also tabled new clause 18, which relates to the provision of information to Parliament regarding offenders who are subject to electronic tagging and the operation of the tagging contract. The success of the measures in this Bill will rely heavily on the use of electronic monitoring, primarily through the use of tags. The Justice Committee has continually raised concerns about the performance of Serco, the Government’s current tagging provider. As a reminder, on 7 May, the Prisons Minister revealed to us that at that point, Serco had received financial penalties for poor performance every month since it took on the electronic monitoring contract on 1 May 2024. Ministers have assured us that Serco’s performance is beginning to improve.
New clause 18 would require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a report each calendar year on the use of electronic monitoring requirements. That report must include the number of electronic monitoring requirements imposed each year, the rate of compliance, and the cost of administering those requirements each year. The report must be laid before Parliament. This would improve transparency and allow parliamentarians to assess for themselves how successfully Serco or other providers are administering tagging contracts.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I rise to speak in support of amendment 24 and the other amendments that I have tabled on behalf of the Opposition. I regret that we have not had the opportunity to hear from important voices on these incredibly important issues through a full Public Bill Committee. Victims groups of all different kinds care deeply about the measures in this Bill. We not only do not get to hear from them as MPs, but the nature of Committee of the whole House means that we do not have the opportunity to put forward for inclusion a whole range of measures that are worthy of our consideration and a vote in support. Anyone reading the amendment paper will see the richness and range of ideas that just will not get the level of detailed consideration they should. It would have been beneficial, and we may well end up giving this incredibly important Bill less than 15 hours of consideration in this House.
I cannot help but feel that the measures related to early release are so unpalatable that the Government are doing their absolute best to rush this Bill through the House to avoid proper scrutiny. I will try, though, to at least give some time and thought to some of the amendments, even if ultimately we will not be able to vote on them. New clause 12 relates to changes to the unduly lenient sentence scheme. At present, the ULS scheme allows anyone to appeal most sentences to the Attorney General’s Office if they consider them to be unduly lenient. I and other Members of this House have made use of this scheme, as have others. It can and does lead to sentences being changed, but there are two major problems with the scheme as it operates.
First, too many victims are unaware of the scheme and do not get long enough to make use of it. At this point, I pay tribute to the amazing campaigners who have done so much to raise this issue. Katie Brett secured thousands of signatures to a petition to change the scheme in memory of her sister Sasha. I pay tribute to Ayse Hussein and other members of the Justice for Victims group. The issue has also been raised for many years by Tracey Hanson, who I had the pleasure of meeting recently, in memory of her son Josh Hanson, who was the victim of an appalling murder. I know that other campaigners are similarly inclined. All of them are clear about the fact that the current scheme does not work. Our amendment will require the Crown Prosecution Service to notify victims, and also extend the time available to appeal to up to a year for victims and their families if the victim is deceased.
Sir John Hayes
I pay tribute to that campaign, and in particular to my hon. Friend’s commitment to victims, which I know is outstanding. Will he acknowledge, too, that many of the people who suffer are suffering at the hands of repeat criminals—career criminals? Sometimes people who have been let out on licence breach the licence conditions. For instance, in my constituency a young woman was killed by a dangerous driver, on licence, who had been banned from driving. There are many like her, and my hon. Friend is standing for them. Will he therefore impress on the Government that they are letting out people who cause grief, harm and hurt? That is just not good enough.
Dr Mullan
As my right hon. Friend says, we can do what we want when it comes to placing conditions on people and expecting them to behave differently, but the only place where we can be sure they are not out committing further offences is prison. Across the board, this measure will let very many serious offenders out of prison earlier, and I shall say more about that towards the end of my speech.
In respect of the undue lenient sentence scheme, the Government have previously said that they will await the outcome of a review of criminal appeals—a review that has already said that the system is working fine, and for the implementation of whose recommendations we have no timetable or plan. The opportunity to make that change is here, and I urge Ministers to take it.
New clause 8 relates to what are clearly unacceptable restrictions on what people can say in victim personal statements, often described as impact statements. This is a further issue that the Justice for Victims group and others have raised. The parents of Sarah Everard, Susan and Jeremy, have made it very clear that the people advising them on their statements were doing their best to act in their best interests, and to help secure the best possible outcome for justice for Sarah, but the system and the rules around this are leading to too many people, like Susan and Jeremy, being told that they cannot say what they should be allowed to say. Glenn and Becky Youens, also from Justice for Victims, had the same experience when making statements about their feelings towards the vile criminals who had killed their precious daughter Violet-Grace. Our new clause will ensure that the Government can help victims to secure the best possible opportunity to say what it is that they want to say, while recognising that the statement is still being made in a court.
New clause 16 is intended to close a loophole that I think all Members agree needs to be closed. Our current sentencing laws require a whole-life order to be passed for those who murder a police or prison officer in the line of duty. That is an important deterrent, and enables the delivery of justice for people who put themselves in harm’s way, dealing with violent criminals, should the worst happen. However, it is clear to me that the courts have not interpreted the meaning of that legislation as I—and, I think, most other Members—would have wanted them to.
In 2024 a former prison officer, Lenny Scott, was murdered. He was murdered by a seriously violent criminal for doing his job as a prison officer. Lenny had bravely stood up to threats from this criminal while he supervised him in prison, as he had reported that he had contraband. Years later, this despicable person came back for his revenge. He was convicted of Lenny’s murder, but the courts decided that the whole-life order tariff did not apply because he had not been actively on duty when the murder took place. I think that is counter to the spirit of the measure. Our new clause would remove the loophole, so that in future if a prison or police officer is murdered because of something they did in their role, whenever that might be, the sentence will be a whole-life order. I imagine that of all the measures we are proposing, that will secure the greatest amount of cross-party support—not at this stage of the Bill, but during future stages in the Lords.
New clause 10 supports greater transparency in our justice system by ensuring that sentencing remarks in the Crown court are available to everyone, and transparency is also at the heart of new clause 9. For too long, for the wrong reasons, we have not been transparent about criminals’ backgrounds. We know that political correctness led to the vile grooming gangs scandal going unchallenged, which should never have been allowed, for many decades. Part of the issue is that we did not have the data and the information that would have enabled us to understand what was happening and who was committing those offences. Why should we not have basic information about criminals that would enable us to have an honest debate about different patterns of criminal behaviour in different communities and different parts of the country, especially when we know that if we refuse to do this—if we refuse to be transparent—all that we do is give fuel to the wrong people? At best, indifference to the need to share this data is looking more and more like a desire to cover up what it might reveal. That has to stop, and our new clause will ensure that it does.
New clause 11 relates to steps that the courts should take to limit parental responsibility for those convicted of child sex offences. In the last Parliament my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) campaigned on this in support of a constituent who met Ministers in that Government to discuss it. In the current Parliament, the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) has joined the campaign, along with other Members. I understand that yesterday the Government tabled an amendment to the related Victims and Courts Bill, which is due for further consideration, and of course we will look closely at that to consider whether it meets the reasonable expectations of parents seeking to protect their children from child sex offenders. New clauses 13 and 14 also relate to child sex offenders.
Sir John Hayes
My hon. Friend is now coming to the nub of the issue. There are different views across the House. There are those of us who believe that the justice system should be retributive, that punishment matters and that punishment should fit crime, and there are those who do not. There are those who do not think that the justice system should be punitive, whereas I think that it should be punitive. I think that more people should go to jail and should go for much longer, not just because it is a deterrent but because it signals public outrage at these heinous acts. That is why it matters, and everyone in the House should realise it.
Dr Mullan
My right hon. Friend has frequently raised this issue, and we are in violent agreement. In my experience, there is intellectual snobbery towards people who think there is moral value in, and an ethical basis for, punishing people properly. Anyone who talks about that often gets labelled as some bigot who does not understand patterns of criminality and all these other things. Of course they are important to consider, but none of these things means that we should not appropriately punish people. It shocks me that that still remains not part of the statutory purposes of sentencing. Punishing people is important, and we do not consider it enough.
For all the reasons I have set out, this Bill is incredibly important. Today is incredibly important too, because it is the last chance for Back-Bench MPs to decide for themselves which parts of this very significant Bill they will support. Next week we will have Third Reading, where Labour MPs will have no choice but to vote for or against the entire Bill.
We know that a major part of this Bill is the earlier release of nearly all offenders. The Opposition are opposed to the programme as a whole, but it is clear that this Bill is a major part of the Government’s plans to reform sentencing. It would be asking a lot of Labour MPs to ask them to consider voting against the entire programme, but we are not asking them to do that. Our amendment 24 gives Labour MPs the route through which they can most justifiably say to their Whips and the Prime Minister, “No, I can’t support this.” We are asking them to say no and to vote against the early release of rapists, paedophiles, seriously violent criminals, criminals who cause death by dangerous driving and attempted murderers. We are giving Labour MPs a clear route out of doing what would be absolutely unprecedented in the management of offenders in our prisons and a deep insult to the victims of serious violent and sexual crime.
Labour MPs, many of whom I have got to know, work with and respect, will know that I spent the last week trying my utmost to encourage them to avoid being put in a position where the Whips will make them vote to release rapists, paedophiles and serious violent criminals earlier. Most shadow Ministers would happily sit back and watch Labour MPs vote for something that will blight their time in Parliament in the eyes of their constituents, but we have not done that. That is because whatever damage voting for this Bill might do to the electoral prospects of Labour MPs, what is more important to me is that its measures do not go through.
As I have said before, I understand the frustrations that MPs of different parties have had over decades about the resources provided to our justice system and the prison estate. I mentioned on Second Reading that when Labour was last in power, it released more than 80,000 prisoners early because of the capacity issues built up during its time in office. This Government and the last Government have operated similar programmes. I wish that emergency release measures never had to be used, and if—this is a very big “if”—I had ever been Prime Minister or Chancellor during these periods, I would have taken different decisions. But at least these measures have to be announced in the full glare of the public eye, carry a political price and are genuinely legislated for as responses to short-term emergency challenges.
I want Labour MPs to be absolutely clear-eyed about the fact that what we are voting on today is not a short-term response to prison crowding challenges. It is a medium to long-term plan—a decision about how we as a country want to respond to people who commit serious violent and sexual offences. I have never met a victim of a serious violent or sexual offence who thinks that the present system suitably punishes serious offenders. I have never met a victim who thinks that we should let these sorts of people out of prison earlier, but that is what this Bill will do.
On Second Reading, I explained the sorts of offences that are included in these measures. Ministers have said that the very worst offenders will be excluded. Since Second Reading, the Opposition have been able to review sentencing data to try to understand what that means in reality. It highlights a disturbing truth and leaves the Government and any MP who votes for this Bill with a difficult question to answer. Those serving extended determinate sentences and life sentences will be excluded from the early release elements of this Bill, whereas those serving standard determinate sentences will not. Prisoners on standard determinate sentences will have their prison time cut.
Every year, more than 60% of criminals sent to prison for rape are on a standard determinate sentence. Over 90% of criminals sent to prison for child grooming are on a standard determinate sentence. Around half of criminals sent to prison for attempted murder are on a standard determinate sentence. Hundreds of criminals guilty of child rape and sexual assault, including rape of children under 13, are in prison on standard determinate sentences. In total, more than 6,500 criminals sent to prison every year for serious violent, sexual and other offences are given determinate sentences. If Labour MPs vote against our amendment 24, every single one of those criminals will be able to get out of prison earlier. Labour MPs will be voting to let rapists and paedophiles out of prison earlier.
Sir John Hayes
The hon. Gentleman is an old friend, and I appreciate his attempt to improve the Bill. The new clauses that he supports are interesting and have merit. Will he acknowledge, though, that it is not just probation services that will be put under extra pressure by this Bill, but that the police will be too? Will he invite the Minister, when he sums up, to talk about the extra resources he can make available to Lincolnshire police and other authorities, as well as to the Probation Service, to implement the provisions of the Bill that he has brought to the Committee?
Grahame Morris
I am grateful for that intervention, which I think is quite sensible, and I support the contention. I hope the Minister will respond appropriately when he has the opportunity.
Does the Minister agree that HM Inspectorate of Probation should have the powers outlined in new clause 4? They are just the sort of safeguards we need in the Bill before more pressure is placed on the Probation Service. We are all aware that it is really overstretched, principally as a result of funding cuts implemented by the previous Government and some of the decisions taken before the present Government came into office.
Finally, I am pleased to register my support for new clause 3, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is my good friend. I echo the concerns that he expressed at length on Second Reading about the potential for exploitation by private companies, such as when unpaid work in London was privatised in 2013. Indeed, that was criticised by the International Labour Organisation as an abuse. Does the Minister agree with the probation union, Napo, that unpaid work orders should always be about payback to the community, that they should be run for public good, not for private profit, and that this safeguard should be placed in the Bill?
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
Last week, I met one of my constituents, Tracey Hanson, in Parliament to honour the 10-year anniversary of the tragic loss of her son Josh, who was murdered in an unprovoked knife attack in Hillingdon, west London, in October 2015. We spoke about the tireless work that she has put into campaigning for victims’ rights, and I heard more about how the law that she wants to introduce—Josh’s law—would ensure that the rights of victims and their families to appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme are clear and equal to the rights of offenders.
I will speak specifically to new clause 12, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for the beautiful Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan). After cruelly taking the life of Josh Hanson, Shane O’Brien absconded and evaded police for three and a half years before he was finally caught. Dubbed Britain’s most wanted man at the time, O’Brien was sentenced to at least 26 years in prison, just one year above the minimum sentence. After just missing the deadline to appeal the sentence as a result of unclear information about victims’ families’ rights under the unduly lenient sentence scheme, Tracey has spent years campaigning to ensure that no other victims face what her family did. Unfortunately, far too many victims and their families face the same problems, simply because they are not being made aware of their right to appeal sentences.
There are also concerning numbers of cases in which clerical errors—in one case I heard of, it was an email stuck in a barrister’s outbox—lead to the Attorney General running out of time and missing the deadline to appeal a sentence. While appeals from offenders will still be considered by the Attorney General outside the 28-day window in exceptional circumstances, appeals from victims or their families will not. Historically, victims were at the centre of the justice system. Victims were the driving force in bringing criminal cases, and played a central role throughout the process. It was not until the 19th century that there was a significant shift towards state-led prosecutions, with the victims, rather than criminal cases, significantly diminished. The focus only started to shift back towards the victim with the very recent introduction of the first victim’s charter in 1990. I believe that we must recapture more of the focus from the state, and divert it back to those who are most directly impacted by crime.
The lives of Tracey and her family will never be the same again. They should have been a central focus in the criminal case, and should have received the same rights, and information about their right to appeal against the sentencing decision, as the offender did. It is vital that victims and their families are clearly informed about their right to appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme. New clause 12 would require the Crown Prosecution Service to write to victims, or their next of kin, within 10 working days of a sentence being passed, providing details of the unduly lenient sentence scheme, the application process for the scheme and the deadlines, which would also be extended, giving victims a better chance of benefiting from the scheme.
Sir John Hayes
My hon. Friend is making a bold case on behalf of victims. I hope that he will agree that the more we agonise about the circumstances of the guilty, the more we displace consideration of the effects on the innocent. Over the whole of my lifetime, the focus on the circumstances of wicked people has had exactly that effect, and unfortunately it has permeated so much of the establishment, including the judiciary; sentences are sometimes inadequate for that very reason.
Blake Stephenson
I think that the justification for not changing that approach over many years has been an argument about finality of sentence, and giving the offenders that finality. I do not think that stacks up today; we need to afford victims more rights and more sensitivity within the system.
New clause 12 is total common sense, and should be supported by Members on both sides of the Committee. It puts victims at the heart of sentencing, and does not compromise the need for finality in sentencing. It pushes the date back, but it does not change the status of that finality.
Sir John Hayes
I had not intended to start this way but I will do so, following the last remarks by the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) about acquired brain injury. I am chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for acquired brain injury, and we recently held a session specifically on the relationship between acquired brain injury and the criminal justice system. She is quite right to emphasise that. I will say no more in detail about it, except to refer the Minister to the report that we published, which includes a section on criminal justice and acquired brain injury.
Beyond that, in talking about the fundamental consideration of this Bill, I want to speak about the facts, the reasons for them, their effects and the alternative, very much in the spirit that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) spoke in when moving her amendment. I recommend her amendments, almost without reservation. They are a bold attempt to rescue the Bill from the damage it might do. I do not claim that that damage is intentional, because I do not think that anyone in this House intends to do harm—we would not be here if we did. None the less, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) said, harm, whether unintended or otherwise, will be the result of this legislation.
It is undeniable, I am afraid, that the Government present to the House a paradox. On one hand, they say that this Bill is necessary because of practicalities, including the inadequate number of prison places. That is a plausible argument, because the prison population has grown, as we heard earlier in the debate, and we simply do not have enough places to accommodate all those who might be sent to prison. On the other hand, they say that it is a matter of principle, and they tell us that short sentences do not work. In doing so, they are conceding to the rehabilitationist argument that has pervaded criminal justice thinking and criminology more generally for the whole of my lifetime. I remember that when I was studying criminology at university, there was exactly that narrative. Other academics challenged it: Philip Bean, the criminologist, wrote a definitive book called “Rehabilitation and Deviance”, in which he made the case for just retribution. The public certainly believe that the criminal justice system should be retributive.
Dr Mullan
My right hon. Friend is talking about a contradiction in the Government’s position, but is there not another one? Labour Members and Ministers in particular talk about the volume of people who are going to be released as a result of their measures, but whenever they are confronted with examples of actual offences committed by the sorts of offenders they will be letting go, they always say, “Well, it wouldn’t apply to them.” The Government cannot have it both ways: either a lot of people are getting out of prison, including some of these people, or they are not. They have to make up their mind.
Sir John Hayes
It is certainly true that a very significant proportion of criminals are repeat offenders, and there are people who choose to live a life of crime. This is not an illness to be treated; it is a malevolent choice to be dealt with through punishment, because we need to punish people for doing harm. That is not complicated—it is what all our constituents would take as read—yet, as I say, we seem to agonise about it perpetually.
Anna Dixon
Referring to my earlier comments, the data show that one in four prisoners are drug users and have a drug and alcohol problem, and they constitute many of the reoffenders. Given that data, does the right hon. Member not agree with me that we should be rehabilitating and medically treating those addictions, so that they are not caught up in the criminal justice system?
Sir John Hayes
It is certainly true that one perverse choice leads to other consequences, and when people become involved in drugs, it often leads to all kinds of horrors. The key thing is therefore to stop people getting involved in drugs, and successive Governments, including this one, have intended to do that. Through a series of measures, we try to deter people from involvement in drugs, to deal with drug dealers and to do all the other things that you will not allow me to speak about at length, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I would be deviating from the content of the amendments if I did—
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. You should learn that one tempers oneself, Sir John.
Dr Mullan
This is very much still on topic. The challenge with the argument that Labour Members put forward on rehabilitation is that it presupposes that all we need to do is put someone on a drug rehabilitation course once, and they will stop offending and it is all fantastic. The evidence shows the complete opposite. Even the very best drug rehabilitation courses that money can buy at the Priory have a long-term success rate of about 50%. In reality, whatever we do, some of these offenders are going down a path from which they will not be turned for a significant length of time, and that is when we have to put them in prison.
Sir John Hayes
I do agree with my hon. Friend.
Just stepping back a moment, Ms Ghani, I am mindful that the only female Speaker we have ever had once famously declared, “Call me Madam”, so I will from now on call you Madam Chairman rather than anything else.
It is certainly true that we need a war against drugs, drug dealing and all the effects of drugs, but it would be quite wrong to separate that from the public desire to see people who do bad things dealt with appropriately. When those bad things are at their extreme, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton pointed out, we are speaking of extremes—acts of violence against women, minors and, let us face it, men—they need to be dealt with with severity. There is nothing wrong with saying that because it is what most people intuitively feel, and it is right that they do. Grotius, the jurist, once said that criminal justice was about
“the infliction of an ill suffered for an ill done”,
and that sense that the punishment must fit the crime rings true now, as it did when he made that observation.
The Minister needs to explain whether the Bill is about practicalities or principle. I have yet to determine which position the Government have taken.
Sally Jameson
I just want to highlight the fact that it is possible to believe that offenders need to be punished, as I do—when I was an officer, I was part of delivering that punishment—and simultaneously that rehabilitation should be a part of the prison system. While I agree with the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) that some offenders are not ready to begin the rehabilitation journey, that does not mean that we should not stand ready to provide it for those who are ready, as it ultimately drives down reoffending and reduces the number of victims, which should be at the heart of everything we do. Punishment and rehabilitation need to work hand in hand.
Sir John Hayes
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. While I attack the rehabilitationist dogma, I do of course believe that we should try to save souls, and the best way of doing that is to address people’s fundamental problems, as many Members across the Committee have said in the course of this debate. That might be about ensuring that people have adequate learning, or it might be about the acquisition of a particular skill. The hon. Lady will know from her rich experience in these matters that if someone can get a job when they leave prison, they are much less likely to reoffend. When someone in those circumstances is unable to get a job, it is usually a result of the fact that they do not have core skills, in terms of basic competencies, or specialist skills. Where those can be provided through learning in prison, that undoubtedly has beneficial results—I have seen that myself in prison, where I have met both the people who run such services and the people receiving them. The hon. Lady is therefore right.
However, I am really speaking about something more fundamental than that, which is a willingness to recognise —as the hon. Lady did, by the way, in her brief intervention —that punishment matters. The reticence or unwillingness to declare that as openly as I have, or the attempt to ignore or avoid it, is at odds with the instincts of the vast majority of our constituents. It is, perhaps, a product of a society that has lost its moral compass, where right and wrong have been eroded through a kind of moral relativism. Perhaps it is because of some quasi-Freudian need to explain crime in more complex terms than it may warrant—for it is simply a question of someone wanting something they cannot get and using force, violence or some other means to get it.
Anna Dixon
The right hon. Gentleman is making a passionate and principled speech about punishment, but we are dealing here with practicalities. The Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, has looked at the prison estate capacity. There was a pledge under the previous Government for 20,000 additional prison places; just 6,518 of those were actually built. If the right hon. Gentleman were to pursue this line of saying that everybody needs to have a punishment without rehabilitation, I do not understand where, in practical terms, he is going to put people.
Sir John Hayes
I agree with the hon. Lady, actually. I remember visiting the former Justice Secretary—the former Member for Cheltenham, Alex Chalk—with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), to tell him that we would not vote for it if that Government brought forward a measure to let people out early. My position on this matter has been entirely consistent; I would not have voted for a Conservative measure that let people out of prison early any more than I will vote for this measure tonight.
I suggested three things to the then Justice Secretary: first, that we deal more robustly with foreign national offenders; again, our constituents would be astounded and appalled if they realised just how many foreign national offenders are in our prisons. Secondly, I suggested taking emergency measures to provide prison places. After all, during covid, we built Nightingale hospitals; I suggested that we build Fry prisons, named after the Tory prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, which will not be lost on the historians here in the Chamber. I do not see why that could not be done.
Thirdly, we should certainly explore prisons that have been closed in recent times, under Conservative and Labour Governments, and see which could be used, either temporarily or on a permanent basis. There is a whole range of measures that we could take. It is not easy, and I say that knowing what it is like being a Government Minister. None of those things are easy, but they are all worthy of further exploration because of the effects that the legislation will have.
Esther McVey
My right hon. Friend talks about the number of people who will be released from prison. I spoke earlier about the number of people who will not even be going to prison. All in all it will be tens of thousands of people not in prison. Does my right hon. Friend agree that when the public find this out, they will want that Government gone?
Sir John Hayes
As my right hon. Friend says with her typical clarity and passion, it may be that the Government bow to public pressure—and there will undoubtedly be public pressure of a kind she describes. We are speaking about people who have done serious harm, including sex offenders of the most extreme kind and violent repeat offenders. These are not people who have committed minor indiscretions; they are very serious criminals. The public will resist their release and protest about it, and the Minister may well feel obliged, as I am sure he is a man of principle, to return to the House and amend the legislation when its effects are truly and fully seen.
My judgment would be that the facts speak for themselves: thousands of people will be let out of prison who certainly should not be. The reasons are as I described them; they are practical, but there is an underlying sentiment that I tried to articulate: it is a fear of punishment and an unwillingness to recognise the retributive nature of criminal justice. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) set out far more eloquently than I ever could, the effects are likely to be devastating for our constituents and communities across the country—and bear in mind that it will happen in every part of this country, every constituency will suffer as a result of the legislation. Each one of us will, as good constituency MPs, have to cope with some of these effects.
The alternative is, as I described when responding to an earlier intervention, to look at every possible means of accommodating people in prison who deserve to be incarcerated—
Sir John Hayes
I am coming to my exciting finale, but I will happy give way on the way to it.
Ben Maguire
I thank the hon. Member for giving way. Does he agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman) that the Conservative Government’s record on prison building was shameful? The former “Minister for Common Sense”, the hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), has been nodding along when Members have said that we need to build more prisons. It certainly sounds like common sense, but why on earth did the Conservative Government not do that?
Sir John Hayes
On a purely technical point, I am right hon. and so are my right hon. Friends the Members for Tatton and for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), but let us put that to one side. It is a matter of public record that I almost never disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Fareham and Waterlooville. The truth is, she is right: we should have built more prisons much earlier. We could have anticipated these things—they can be modelled, after all. By the way, Governments are often surprisingly poor at modelling—I saw that throughout my time in government—but we should have modelled this, given the trend change in the prison population.
Esther McVey
It might be helpful to give some of the numbers. Three prisons were built, with 8,500 places—they were delayed because of lockdown—and another three prisons are on the way.
Sir John Hayes
I noted those figures earlier. My right hon. Friend is right—we also rarely disagree, and I did not disagree with a word she said earlier—that more prison places were added, but there are two things about that. What we did not really take necessary account of was the effect of sentencing policy. If more people are sentenced to incarceration, perfectly properly, that changes the trend. We certainly could have dealt more effectively with foreign national offenders than we did, which was another growing problem. Furthermore, over a long period of time, while we were adding places we took some prison places out. We need to think about the number of prisons that closed. She is therefore right. [Interruption.] It is not that we did nothing—far from it; we did many good things of the kind she described—but, unfortunately, not enough account was taken over a long enough period.
It is not largely about the immediate policy of the previous Government. It goes back much further than that to a series of Governments of both major parties over a long time indeed. The modelling that I described is decade-long modelling.
It is an extremely difficult business to get planning permission to build a prison. The last Government often struggled with resistance to having a prison built or expanded in a locality. It is usually local constituency MPs—we can imagine such people: Liberal Democrat types—who come here and say one thing—[Interruption.] Notice that I said “types” rather than just Liberal Democrats. They say one thing but go back to their constituencies and campaign against opening a prison.
Mr Kohler
I say to the right hon. Gentleman and many hon. Members that the prison population is a supply-led industry. If we build more prisons, we will just get more prisoners. It does not address the issue. All history tells us that—look at America. We imprison more people in this country than is done in Europe, yet we have a higher rate of criminality. More people are imprisoned in America than here, yet America has a higher rate of criminality. Building prisons is a fool’s errand.
Sir John Hayes
The thing that I most admire about the hon. Gentleman is his sartorial style—I glanced across towards him earlier, and I was going to say to him as I left the Chamber, “I love your suit”—but I rarely agree with what he says. We come from very different perspectives. In a sense—I do not mean to be unkind—his view is part of the problem. The problem is the persistent idea that putting people in prison is cruel and nasty. Of course, it is pretty nasty, and most of our constituents think it should be—in fact, they probably think it should be nastier than it is. Our difference of opinion will never be reconciled in a few brief exchanges, but it is important to note that a range of sentences are available to the courts—not just prison—and the key thing, about which I am sure we agree, is that those sentences need to be fitting to the events, fitting to the effects of the crime and fitting to the interests of the victims, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) said in moving his new clause.
Josh Babarinde
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his sartorial appreciation some time ago of my green suit, when he went on to ask whether I won it at a village fête.
Josh Babarinde
I did not, but maybe the right hon. Gentleman can agree on the point that I want to make. He spoke about the challenges that Governments have had when modelling prisoner numbers and the prison population. Does he therefore agree with David Gauke, who recommended in his report that there should be an independent body that does that modelling, and is he disappointed that there is not a feature of that in the Bill?
Sir John Hayes
No, I do not. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on using the word “appreciated” exactly as in its dictionary definition. I did appreciate his sartorial style, but that is not to say that I either admired or approved it. [Laughter.]
In respect of David Gauke, who is a former colleague and was commissioned to produce that report, I do not agree in essence with it. I am more inclined to agree with the analysis of the shadow Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle. There is a huge mistake in assuming that incarceration is not of itself beneficial—to deal with the simple issue of recidivism, people cannot do harm when they are locked up. By far the best and most straightforward way of dealing with recidivism is to take people out of harm’s way, and by that I mean taking them out of doing harm.
If someone has committed a very serious crime, such as rape, murder or very violent assault, locking them up means they will not do it again. Releasing them means, too often, that they will; the statistics speak for themselves. If the Government want to really deal with recidivism, they should do three things: increase the number of whole-life sentences, raise the minimum sentence for a whole range of crimes and raise maximum sentences. To do that, they have to build more prisons. The mission I give to the Government is that they jettison the Bill before it does harm, think about how they can devise and deliver alternatives to that and be bold in making a case for a retributive system of criminal justice in a way that so few people have for so long.
Warinder Juss
As a member of the Justice Committee, it is a privilege to speak in support of the Bill. I welcome the much-needed reform that it will bring to our courts and prisons system. I wish to speak in support of clause 1 and amendment 36, relating to sentences of 12 months or less, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Pam Cox).
We are well aware in this House of the disastrous situation our prison system was left in by the previous Government and I am proud that this Government are now confronting the crisis head on. We are committed to not just short-term fixes, but long-term reform. The Bill will tackle the root causes of the issues that lead to the crisis in the first place and rebuild a justice system that delivers fairness, safety and accountability to all in society. Amendment 36 will do more than just reduce the pressure on our prison system; it will represent a vital cultural shift, placing rehabilitation and reintegration at the heart of our sentencing system.
Since becoming an MP, I have visited several prisons and one thing that has become clear is how easy it is to fall into the reoffending cycle, especially for those who are serving short sentences. A minor offence can lead to a short prison sentence that can affect a prisoner’s entire life. They leave prison and they have no home, no connections and no job. When they are released from prison, they have no option but to fall back into the same behaviours that put them in prison in the first place.