Sentencing Bill

John McDonnell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Ind)]

To respond to the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin), in 1997—I do not know if my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was with us then—we were concerned that the prison population was 40,000; it is now 80,000 and it is predicted to go up to 112,000 if we continue on the current flightpath. I just say to the hon. Lady that we are all straining to do our best to make sure that all our constituents are safe and that there is a just and effective system in our society to deal with crime and injustices. However, based on what I heard of her understanding of the Bill, I suggest it would be worth her while to sit down with Justice Ministers so that they can take her through some of the detail of the Bill, because I genuinely think there are elements of it that she has completely misconstrued. I say that not in any party knockabout way; I just think that would be worth while, because we want, particularly with this Bill, to build as much consensus as possible to reassure people out there that this House cares about their concerns.

I declare an interest in that I am an honorary life member of the Prison Officers Association. There is no financial relationship or nexus to that and, as I have said before, the POA has made it clear that there is no benefit to me whatsoever—I would not get a south-facing cell, an extra pillow or anything like that; it is a privilege. I want to make four or five points very briefly, because I know that others want to speak, and they will to a certain extent echo those of my hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Grahame Morris) and for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter).

On the sentence management process, all the advice we get from Napo, which represents probation officers, shows that there is a shortfall of about 10,000 staff, exactly as my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick said. The morale in the service itself—remember that probation officers have gone through privatisation, and then been brought back as a public service—is pretty low. They are very committed professionals, but having wages stagnate for a long period has had its effect, and recruitment and retention is a real issue that we need to address. I would not underestimate the stress they are under at the moment. We welcome the additional resource, but realistically there is a demand for more that we need to take on board.

One issue with resettlement that has been raised with us by probation officers and others is that because of the cutbacks in local government and other funding regimes, a lot of the voluntary sector bodies that they relied on to refer their clients to are no longer operating or have been starved of resources for a long period. A lot of those voluntary sector bodies were specialists in their own way, in particular with regard to drug abuse.

The second issue is about prison. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick that we need a lot more detail about earned progression, but prison officers tell us that the reality is that rehabilitation is almost impossible at the moment. Prisoners cannot access the courses that are needed. We do not even have the staff who will go to their cells to accompany them to rehabilitation and education courses. Again, the pressure staff are under is immense.

One specific issue with the skilled worker visa system has been raised by the Prison Officers Association. It has had an impact on the number of staff working in our prisons. I was not aware of this to be honest, but there were recruitment campaigns in Africa and elsewhere. Staff have been brought here and now we are at risk of losing them because they fall foul of the new visa regime. It does not just affect prisons—it affects a whole range of services—but it needs to be looked at again.

Another issue that has been discussed is the supervision of unpaid work. I am really worried that there are discussions about privatising that again. In London, we had the experience of Serco a number of years ago when it was privatised. To be frank, it was an absolute disaster. I am worried that it could be interpreted as simply exploiting prisoners for private profit in some instances.

There is not much reference in the Bill to children and I wonder whether we will come back to that, because unless we look at the regime for children as well, we could be in a situation where children will be serving longer sentences than some adults. One other point in relation to children that has been raised by a number of organisations, such as the Howard League, is the publication of a prisoner’s or convicted person’s photo. I can understand the motivation behind that, but I believe the family often serves the sentence just as much as the prisoner. As a result, stigma is attached to the whole family. What we have found from our experience is that children have suffered because of crimes perpetrated by the parent. We need to be very careful about how we use the identification process. We need to do it wisely and look at the implications for the whole family.

I will make two final points. On race, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been goaded by the Opposition, but the work he did on an exploration of the justice system highlighted discrimination in the system—we have to admit that. It is not about two-tier justice; it is about trying to get fair justice for everybody. The reality is that all the statistics demonstrate that for the same crime, those who are black or Asian will get a harsher sentence and will almost certainly have a harsher regime when in prison than others. We need to follow up the work done by my right hon. Friend. We need to be open and transparent, and get all the information out there again and re-examine it on intersectionality and the implications for the justice system.

Finally, I share the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick on IPP. We have been at this for a number of years and the Select Committee made its recommendation on re-sentencing. The Government rejected it, because they were worried about being branded as releasing prisoners into the community and worried that there would be risks. The re-sentencing exercise was about how to manage and minimise those risks.

Every time we have this debate and we do not move forward, what happens? We have had suicides of those IPP prisoners. I am worried that unless we speed up the resolution of this problem, we will have an injustice. Lord Blunkett, who introduced the system, has subsequently absolutely condemned it, saying it was one of the worst mistakes he ever made in politics. We will render those injustices continuing ones and do more harm to both the prisoners themselves and—as those who have had constituents who have endured this will know—their families. As I say, the families serve the sentence as much as the individuals concerned. Although there has been progress on this, I do think we need to revisit it in some legislative form in the near future.