Sentencing Bill

Debate between Judith Cummins and Andy Slaughter

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter]

That is a valid concern. Ministers assure us that performance on the contract is improving in exactly those areas, but we are not just waiting for that improvement; we are introducing a huge additional burden, because all those offenders who will now remain in the community, rather than being incarcerated, will need tagging. I worry that an unreliable contractor with a poor record—even if it is improving—is being given a great additional burden.

Let me turn to another aspect of the Bill. It amends the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to revise down the statutory release point for standard determinate sentence prisoners to one third, although additional days added to time in custody as a consequence of breaches of the Prison Rules 1999, known as adjudications, will be served after the one-third point. Those changes follow the sentencing review’s recommendation that the Government should introduce an earned progression model for those serving SDSs. The review argued that, as a large proportion of offenders will be released after one third of their sentence,

“custodial sentences should be used to incentivise good behaviour and focus on limiting the risks of reoffending.”

As the sentencing review set out:

“The criteria for compliance should also include the expectation that the offender will engage in purposeful activity and attend any required work, education, treatments and/or training obligations where these are available.”

The review also held the view that,

“as prison capacity eases and fuller regimes become possible, compliance requirements for earned release should become more demanding.”

I would appreciate clarity from the Minister on what exactly is meant by a “more demanding” regime.

The Justice Committee is currently halfway through its inquiry into the rehabilitation and resettlement of offenders. It has heard of the difficulties that prisons face in administering proper rehabilitation programmes when prisons are full, which results in most of their efforts being focused on dealing with day-to-day incidents and combating widespread drug use. Rehabilitative programmes also vary greatly between prisons.

I welcome the steps taken towards an earned progression model in the Bill and hope they can free up capacity to allow for a better and more consistent rehabilitative regime. It is important that once the changes are made, rehabilitative regimes remain robust and continue to be focused on combating the behaviours that lead to reoffending, rather than being focused primarily on prisoners meeting the goals that lead to their early release—that is a rare point of agreement with the shadow Lord Chancellor.

Under the earned progression model, there is also the possibility that some prisoners may stay in prison for longer than they currently would as they do not meet the new criteria for release and are required to serve additional days. That, of course, will put further strain on the numbers in prison. Prisoners should be provided with clear guidance setting out how they should implement the earned progression model. This will ensure consistency for prisoners subject to the model and ensure that victims are informed of what to expect under the scheme.

In brief, we need to ensure, first, that the reasons for rehabilitation are clear—are they undertaking additional work, or are they simply keeping their noses clean in prison? We need to consider how rehabilitation will be used in prisons in future, and we need look at every aspect of incarceration as to how the earned progression model will work.

The Bill contains two clauses that make provisions relating to the Sentencing Council. Clause 19 introduces a statutory obligation on the Sentencing Council to obtain joint approval from the Lord Chancellor and the Lady Chief Justice for all sentencing guidelines before final definitive guidelines are issued. It is borne out of the disagreement of the former Lord Chancellor with the Sentencing Council earlier this year regarding the revised guideline on the imposition of community and custodial sentences. The revised guideline was the subject of much, and often poor-quality, political debate at the time.

The former Lord Chancellor promised to further review the Sentencing Council’s powers during the Bill stages of the Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Act 2025 in April this year. On Second Reading, I expressed my concern that it could cause

“damage to the relationship between Parliament, the Executive and the judiciary.”——[Official Report, 22 April 2025; Vol. 765, c. 1012.]

I also expressed regret about how it had been used to support attacks on the judiciary. Concerns have been raised regarding the impact that the Lord Chancellor’s veto in clause 19 could have on the judicial independence of the Sentencing Council.

However, if we are to have a double lock, perhaps we should have a triple lock. One suggestion that was made to me was that the Justice Committee—as well as or instead of the Lord Chancellor—should be granted the power to veto or approve guidelines. That would operate alongside the equivalent power of the Lady Chief Justice. It would go beyond the Committee’s current role as a statutory consultee for ordinary Sentencing Council guidelines, but the logic would be to rebalance power so that democratic parliamentary oversight is given to the guidelines, rather than there being a veto on behalf of only the Executive and the judiciary.

One area not covered in the Gauke review or the Bill is the question of those who are in prison on imprisonment for public protection sentences. It has been 12 years since the last IPP sentence was handed down, yet around 2,500 people are still serving IPP sentences in prison. It is now widely acknowledged that the nature of such sentences causes serious distress for those who are serving them and their loved ones. I welcome the Government’s progress in reducing the numbers of IPP prisoners, with a 9% reduction in the year to 31 March 2025. More could still be done, but the work being done through the action plan by the current Prisons Minister, and indeed the previous sentencing Minister, has gone some way towards achieving that.

In 2022, the previous Justice Committee recommended that a resentencing exercise should be carried out to bring the sentencing for IPP prisoners into line with current sentencing practice. Successive Governments have chosen not to take up that recommendation. My position remains that a resentencing exercise is the most effective and comprehensive way to reduce the number of IPP prisoners, and I think IPP prisoners should have been included in this legislation.

In conclusion, I welcome the legislation and commend the Government for bringing forward these bold reforms. However, I note that there are a number of areas where more detail is needed and where I can see challenges in its implementation. Many of the measures in the Bill will place extra pressures on an already stretched Probation Service. I hope that some of the issues that I have highlighted can be covered during the Bill’s passage through the House, despite the limited time that we will have in Committee of the whole House. I and my colleagues on the Justice Committee will consider ways in which we may be able to press the Government on points of concern through amendments. I hope that the Bill will go at least some way towards solving our prisons crisis and restoring the faith of the public in our damaged criminal justice system.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Legal Aid Agency: Cyber-security Incident

Debate between Judith Cummins and Andy Slaughter

Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

The loss of very sensitive data relating to so many vulnerable people over such a long time makes this one of the most serious data breaches of recent years. It is also a wake-up call, alerting us to the poor state of the Legal Aid Agency IT systems, and perhaps Government IT systems more generally. I appreciate that the Minister has inherited this debacle, but it is on her desk now. Will she confirm the numbers affected, whether the leaks have been stemmed, and what steps are being taken to recover the data from the thieves who have taken it? I have more questions that there is not time to deal with here. She said that she will provide a written statement, but will she also brief the Select Committee and the opposition parties, if necessary in confidence, on the steps being taken to rectify the situation?

[Sarah Sackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that pertinent question. He will appreciate that it would be inappropriate for me to comment in any great detail while the investigation is ongoing. As he and the rest of the House can imagine, if we are talking about those who have applied for or been in receipt of legal aid since 2010 and all the legal providers in this country that have had legal aid contracts with the Government, one gets a sense of the scale of the exposure. It is a very serious breach indeed.

The malign criminals who are responsible for the hack have given a figure for the amounts of data that they have, which has been trailed in some of the newspapers. Those who have read the papers will know that it is in the region of 2 million items of data, so one can see that the scale of the problem is very serious indeed. I should say that that figure cannot be verified, and I will not comment in further detail.

With respect to my hon. Friend’s request that the JSC and Opposition parties are kept up to date as the investigation develops and as we take steps to eliminate this risk from our systems, I am very happy to give that update.

Knife Crime: Children and Young People

Debate between Judith Cummins and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 20th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

This is a timely debate, as Members considered the knife crime provisions of the Crime and Policing Bill only last week. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on granting time for it, and thank the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) for his compelling speech. We have heard some emotional speeches, which show the empathy that Members on both sides of the House have for victims of knife crime and their families.

Over the years, I have met constituents who have had their lives irrevocably changed by knife crime, whether it resulted in the murder or a loved one or a serious injury. I have spoken with mothers who have lost their children, and adult children who have lost their elderly parents after they were stabbed to death. Knife crime can affect anyone, and the pain that the surviving family members live with after such horrific events is palpable.

The Minister will know that I want to talk about harm reduction; I have spoken about this in this House, and with her, on several occasions. Two thirds of knives that have been identified as having been used to kill people are kitchen knives. That is in deaths where we know what the weapon is. That statistic should not be surprising; many murders are unplanned and committed on the spur of the moment with little thought, and kitchen knives are the weapons most readily to hand.

There has been much in the media this week about the new Netflix drama series “Adolescence”, which is a commentary on the many problems faced by young people growing up, not just knife crime, but it highlights how an easily accessible weapon can be used to cause devastation and change the course of many people’s lives forever. For years, bereaved families, support groups, youth groups and schools have called for the Government of the day to do something tangible to stop this, and to allow children to have a childhood. Their calls are now joined by prominent voices such as those of Idris Elba and Stephen Graham, the latter describing a “pandemic of knife crime” in our country.

I know that this Government are listening and want to make a change, but we need to do it quickly and thoroughly. The previous Government’s measures did not go far enough. The new measures in the Crime and Policing Bill go further, but more can still be done. There is a growing campaign to phase out kitchen knives with pointed tips as an everyday household item, and replace them with kitchen knives with rounded tips, as the hon. Member for Huntingdon mentioned. It is well documented that pointed knives are more likely to pierce vital organs and sever arteries—injuries that are far more likely to be fatal. Rounded knives are much less likely to cause lethal injuries, and most of us rarely use the pointed end of a kitchen knife when cooking.

The Crime and Policing Bill limits the purchase of new knives, but there are already millions of pointed kitchen knives in drawers around the country. The safer knives group, of which I am a member, has suggested a pilot scheme to convert pointed kitchen knives into safer, rounded-tip knives. We need to encourage manufacturers to replace pointed knives with rounded knives, and to discourage the sale of pointed knives by creating a price differential.

As I have said, making knives safer is only one step in reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries. Education, intervention and support, following the methods of the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, would produce long-term solutions. It is also vital that we collect more data on the types of knives used in any knife-related crime. Information, policy changes, legislation and expert advice are all important, but it all has to lead to a change of behaviour, so that communities stop killing each other with knives, and that must be a national priority. I know the Minister agrees with me on that, but we must see action, and we all have to work on that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Point of Order

Debate between Judith Cummins and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, today the Government published their 10-year prison capacity strategy. This long-awaited and significant document led most news programmes last night and this morning. The media has been fully briefed, and the Lord Chancellor has given interviews and accompanied Nick Robinson of the “Today” programme to HMP Stocken to explain the strategy. The strategy envisages a huge prison-building programme, but still predicts that prisons will be full again in three years without changes to sentencing policy. The people who have not had an opportunity to discuss this are Members of this House, including members of the Justice Committee, which last week announced a major inquiry into rehabilitation and reducing reoffending.

A cynic might think that by utilising a written ministerial statement to launch the strategy, rather than an oral statement, the Government avoid scrutiny by Members and your reaction, Madam Deputy Speaker, to the media being informed of important policy announcements before this House. How can I ensure that this matter can be fully explored by all Members?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving notice of his point of order. I have had no indication that the Justice Secretary intends to come to the House to make a statement, and I have no power to compel her to do so. The Table Office will be able to advise him on how he might be able to pursue the matter further.

I will now announce the result of today’s deferred Division on the draft Movement of Goods (Northern Ireland to Great Britain) (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Transitory Provision and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024. The Ayes were 375 and the Noes were nine, so the Ayes have it.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity

Debate between Judith Cummins and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

I welcome the approach the Lord Chancellor is taking to the management of the prison system, and the appointment of David Gauke to head the sentencing review. Given that the initiatives she has announced today to relieve pressure on prisons will create additional work for already overstretched probation officers, will she make a further statement when she has decided what operational changes she is going to make to the Probation Service? The additional 14,000 prison places she has promised to build will take prison capacity to above 100,000. Is that desirable in the long term? Given her intention to expand punishment outside prison, will she make it her aim in time to close some of the worst of our existing prisons, built two or three centuries ago, which warehouse crime and, despite the best efforts of prison staff, do little or nothing to reform or rehabilitate their inmates?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his questions. On probation, I recognise the very high workloads that probation officers are working under. We committed in our manifesto to a strategic review of probation governance. I have made sure that we have brought forward the recruitment of an extra 1,000 probation officers by March next year. We are working closely with probation unions and probation staff on the frontline to manage the situation. I am very conscious that we do not want to take the pressure out of the prisons and just leave it with the Probation Service instead. This is a whole-system response, and the whole system needs to be stabilised and able to face the pressures we see in it.

On the prison population, make no mistake: the number of prison places will increase in this country. We will deliver the 14,000 the previous Government did not deliver, and the prison population will therefore rise. However, as I have said, we cannot build our way out of this crisis, and we do have to do things differently. We are a very long way away from any of the changes the Chair of the Select Committee may want to see, but fundamentally we must make sure, and the review must make sure, that we never ever run out of prison places in this country again.