Sentencing Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Andy Slaughter

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter]

The right hon. Member is not easily confused. I will turn to exactly that point later, but in brief it is both, and there is a contradiction in it being both. There is going to be a massive expansion in prison places, and there are going to be more people in prison. However, at the same time, partly to reduce the need for even more prisons to be built and partly because there are alternatives to custody, there will be people leaving prison as well. It is a difficult trick to pull off, I appreciate, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is up to the task.

The Sentencing Bill shifts the focus from custodial sentences to dealing with offenders in the community. It is paramount, therefore, that probation services are adequately funded to manage the substantial increase in workload and that supporting resources, such as electronic monitoring, are available and reliable. There are several measures in the Bill that will increase the pressure on probation services. These include a statutory presumption to suspend custodial sentences of 12 months or less; an extension of the availability of suspended sentences to three years rather than two; and new community orders, including those that ban offenders from public events and drinking establishments, prohibit offenders from driving and impose restriction zones on them.

In the 2023-24 annual report and accounts for the Prison and Probation Service, the overall annual leaving rate for Probation Service staff was over 10%. His Majesty’s inspectorate of probation said:

“High workloads and a lack of support are critical factors in driving practitioners away from their roles”.

A report leaked to the BBC estimated that there is currently a shortfall of around 10,000 probation staff, which is four or five times the number being recruited. I welcome the extra £700 million pledged during the spending review period to assist the Probation Service in dealing with the increased pressures. It will be vital in filling the shortfall and increasing staff retention. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State acknowledged that in response to me during Justice questions today.

The success of the measures in the Bill relies heavily on the use of electronic monitoring, primarily through the use of tags. The Justice Committee has continually raised its concerns about the performance of Serco, the Government’s current tagging provider. In correspondence with the Committee dated 7 May this year, the Prisons Minister revealed to us the shocking fact that Serco had received financial penalties for poor performance every month since it took on the electronic monitoring contract a year earlier.

In oral evidence given to the Committee, Ministers have recognised that Serco’s performance has been unacceptable and that stronger punishments for Serco are possible, should it continue to fail. Those should include possible debarment and exclusion from bidding for public contracts. Indeed, some of us wondered how Serco was ever awarded that contract by the previous Government after the appalling fraud it committed during its previous tenure as contractor. Ministers have reassured us that Serco’s performance is beginning to improve. It is difficult to see how the Government can continue to have faith in Serco, but it is also evident that they cannot easily shift to another contractor as there appears to be no viable alternative.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Naturally, I had assumed that if people were not going to serve short sentences, in many cases they would be tagged. It is worrying to hear what the hon. Member is saying about Serco’s performance. Is he saying that effectively the people being tagged are not being properly monitored? In which case, does that not bring the viability of the whole system into question?