Draft Home Detention Curfew and Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods (Amendment) Order 2024

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 General Committees

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell.

The Minister’s remarks were to be expected; they are in keeping with the trend across Government of defending decision after decision taken by them by reference to the Conservatives’ record and actions in office. That is the nature of politics, and I imagine it will continue for some time, but I am certainly not going to write any blank cheque to the Minister and the Government, nor abdicate our duty to hold them responsible and accountable for whatever they might say about their inheritance. It is our role to deliver scrutiny—of not just the overall outcome they are seeking but how they are going about it.

Although the Government’s intent to address prison capacity pressures is clear, we must critically assess: whether these measures have been properly considered; that we can expect them to be delivered competently; and that, when looked at in detail, they match up to the Government’s pledges. Our prison system faces unprecedented strain, and all the evidence suggests that that strain has become the challenge we see today primarily because of covid. If the remand population that has spiked directly because of covid were at historical levels, we would not be here; we have been left with 7,000 more people in our prisons, compared to the historical average. Members will know that this sum is greater than the numbers that the Government have released and will be going on to release to reduce the steady-state prison population.

The previous Labour Government, like this one, sought ways to manage the challenge, including through use of the end of custody licence scheme—a scheme that, as they have criticised it, Government Members should be aware was actually created by the last Labour Government. The previous Government also had a plan to change legislation to allow us to accommodate prisoners overseas and to discourage use of shorter sentences. This Government have, of course, decided to take their own measures, beginning, as we have heard, with the SDS40 scheme, and now they proposes to extend home detention curfew eligibility from 180 to 365 days.

We are told that both measures are short-term, that the impact of the steps has been fully understood and that there should be some acceptance that the Government will deliver the mechanisms effectively. Let me begin with the proposition that these are short-term measures, or, as the Minister likes to call them, “urgent”. I make the same point I made to the Lord Chancellor in the Chamber on SDS40. If these measures are expected to be short-term, why have they not been sunsetted? If the Minister is confident that they are only short-term, he should make them short-term in the legislation.

The Government have not even gone so far as to tell us the threshold for when they will review possible withdrawal. To be fair to the last Labour Government, even they did that. When they introduced the end of custody licence scheme, they set a prison capacity target—a fixed figure—at which they would review its use, and that is what happened. This Government have not even done that. As is so often the case, the devil is in the detail, or to be more precise in this instance, in the impact assessment. Why, if this is a short-term measure, is the period measuring its benefit over 10 years? It is there in black and white on page 7 of the impact assessment. The Government cannot expect the Opposition to support measures that they say are short-term when all the evidence suggests that they are not.

Next, I turn to the question of whether we have the necessary assurance that the Government have properly considered the impact of their policy. I am afraid, again, that the Minister and Committee members will need to reflect on the Government’s own impact assessment to assist them with this. Page 4 helpfully lays out those who will be affected by the policy. Quite rightly, paragraph 13 lays out that

“Victims of those released from custody”

should be included in this group. I am sure that everyone here can agree that female victims of male violence, and people who have been burgled or mugged, are impacted when they see the perpetrator walk away from prison early.

Paragraph 56, on page 10, summarises the impact assessment, stating:

“We have taken into account the potential impact of the earlier release of some offenders on the public and, particularly, victims of the offenders released.”

I am afraid that the Minister will need to help me here. Forgive me, but where exactly between pages 4 and 10 have the Government done that? Extraordinarily, the document talks about how much better it will be for the perpetrators and their families to be reunited, but what about victims and their families? Besides a cursory mention of notifying them that this will be happening and of the impact on them, it says absolutely nothing.

Finally, we come to effective delivery. Where might we look to make an assessment of that? Of course, we did not look any further than this legislation, because as well as expanding the HDC scheme, as the Minister has said, today’s legislation is also correcting errors in the SDS40 scheme. This amendment rightly excludes six additional offences that were missing from the SDS40 scheme, ensuring that those convicted serve at least half their sentence. How did the Government initially overlook offences such as breaching restraining orders, sexual harm prevention orders and serious harassment? Those are not minor offences; they carry significant harm, particularly for victims.

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

indicated dissent.

[Dr Mullan]

The Minister may shake his head and say that in some ways they were captured, but ultimately, as he has admitted, offenders have been released who should not have been.

Ultimately, this provision will also significantly change the number of electronic monitoring tags required. The framework acknowledges this, but fails to detail how the Government will ensure readiness. We have seen what happens when these systems fail. Under the SDS40 early release scheme, offenders were released without tags, posing a clear danger to the public. We are told that the Government are now up to date with the SDS40 scheme. Can the Minister tell us the situation with the wider backlog? I am afraid that the Government have not done enough to reassure us that yet further extensions to the use of tagging at this stage will be suitably managed. The Lord Chancellor has also committed to funding at least 1,000 additional probation officers by March 2025. The recruitment and training of probation officers takes time. What evidence do we have that that target will be met?

I am afraid that, on the three sensible tests against which we might view this policy, the result is wanting. The Government want to talk about our record. I remind them that they steered the Crown Court to a higher backlog, after we had reduced the backlog pre-pandemic.

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

indicated dissent.

[Dr Mullan]

The Minister frowns, but he can look it up. Pre-pandemic, the backlog was lower than the backlog that Labour left us at the end of its previous time in government. The Government criticise, saying that we forced them to release several thousand prisoners early. Perhaps Government Members do not know that they released more than 80,000 prisoners early when they were last in charge.

There is no doubt that there are challenges in our criminal justice system, but the Government should not expect and will not receive a free pass when it comes to fulfilling their responsibilities to tackle that challenge with professionalism and due diligence. The public expect better than this and we will be voting against this order on their behalf.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Eastbourne, for recognising at the start of his speech that the Government are taking this matter very seriously. I also say to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, that the official Opposition are absolutely right not to give the Government a free pass. “The public expect better”, he said, but he should bear in mind that our scheme excludes people convicted of sexual offences, while his Conservative Government did not put any exclusions in place at all. Their scheme was done hurriedly just before the election, while this is being done to take control of the prison population in response to a crisis, so that we can run the criminal justice system appropriately. If the previous Government had done their job properly, we would have inherited a situation on which we could build positively into the future, but that has sadly not been the case.

I will deal with the issues raised by the Liberal Democrat spokesman first. We take victims and victims’ voices very seriously, and we will continue to do so. Anyone convicted of offences linked to domestic abuse, such as stalking and harassment, are presumed unsuitable for HDC. Exclusions under SDS40 have to be based on specific offences, and domestic abusers are prosecuted under many powers. Our exclusions send a clear message about how seriously the Government take domestic abuse and, unlike the end of custody supervised licence scheme, we have taken specific action, and we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that victims’ voices are well represented on these issues. Victims eligible for the victim notification scheme or victim contact scheme are properly informed during the process; that is taking place. The sentencing review will look at other things, and we have made sure that there is a victims’ voice on its panel.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, rightly asked whether the electronic monitoring system is doing its job effectively. Again, we inherited a contract from the previous Government that was not performing to the level we would have wished. It is improving, but it is still not where we want it to be. It is at a point at which we are confident that it can handle the coming additional workload, but we need to continue to work hard to make sure that the contractors deliver, as they should always have been delivering; we should not have inherited a situation where they were not performing to the level that they should have been.

The shadow Minister asked when SDS40 will be reviewed. When he raised that in the Chamber, the Lord Chancellor assured him that it would be reviewed after 18 months and that it would come back to Parliament at that point.

I do hope, having had this discussion, that the Committee will support—

[Dr Mullan]

I think the Minister has only answered one of my questions. Will he address the 10-year timescale and the lack of any discussion of victims in the impact assessment? I think there were two other points he could usefully try to reply to.

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

As he probably realises, all impact assessments have a 10-year focus. The impact assessment is nothing to do with intention; it is about the impact if things went on for that period of time. It is the normal process. The hon. Gentleman is confusing the impact assessment with the Government’s intention. The Government’s intention is not for this provision to continue for that period of time.

Question put.