Sentencing (Pre-consolidation Amendments) Bill [HL] (Law Commission Bill)

Lord Bates Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Tuesday 11th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, I rise as testament to the grace of the open speakers’ list offered by the Whips’ Office that a non-lawyer should be able to speak on a Law Commission Bill, in a debate in which will take part two former Lord Chancellors, a former Lord Chief Justice and a Deputy President of the Supreme Court. I also stand between your Lordships and the very welcome maiden speech of a former High Court judge.

I am speaking because I read the written evidence provided to the Special Public Bill Committee on this measure by the Prison Reform Trust, which welcomes the Bill but remains

“concerned that Parliament risks missing a vital opportunity to scrutinise the impact of the current sentencing framework on outcomes in the criminal justice system.”

With your Lordships’ forbearance, I want to test for a few moments the effectiveness of those custodial sentences.

It goes without saying that it is right that those convicted of a criminal offence are punished for that offence. It is important that victims see justice being done. A custodial sentence can serve as a deterrent and protect the public from those who pose a serious threat. However, the objective of sentencing should also be that the offender may on completion of their sentence be rehabilitated and leave their criminal behaviour behind them.

Yet it is in this final area that we seem to be having most difficulty. The prison population in England and Wales was 83,430 in 2019. In 1900 the prison population was around 17,400; over the next 90 years it doubled to around 40,000 and over the past 30 years it has doubled again. It is projected to continue to grow to 85,800 by 2022 and at that rate we will hit around 100,000 in England and Wales by 2030. The average cost per prison place in England and Wales is £40,843. There are fewer than 100 prisoners serving whole-of-life sentences, so while we are locking more people up we are also letting more people out. Last year 69,622 prisoners were released from prison. Reoffending rates are 48% for all adults released, rising to 65% for those serving sentences shorter than 12 months. A survey published by the Ministry of Justice last year put the economic and social cost of reoffending at £18.1 billion. Where have we gone wrong and what can we do to put it right?

Prevention would be best. We know that fewer than 1% of school pupils have been permanently excluded from school in the general population, but in the prison population they account for 42%. We know that 2% of children have been taken into care in the general population but they form 24% of the prison population. We know that 64% had used illicit drugs before entering prison, that 46% had alcohol problems and that 40% have mental health problems. We know that 62% of prisons are currently rated as overcrowded, with cells intended for one person often used to house two. We know that many prisoners are locked in their cells for all but a few hours of each day.

I suggest another reason why prison is failing to be as effective at rehabilitation as we wish: while we have strengthened a little our belief in judgment and demands for retribution, perhaps with the advance of social media and the web, at the same time, perhaps with the decline in religious belief, we have weakened a little our understanding of and belief in concepts such as forgiveness, mercy, grace and redemption. Redemption: the belief that though you have done something terribly wrong, at the end of your punishment and displaying remorse there is afforded to you a second chance to start afresh and make a positive contribution to society.

In his book No Future Without Forgiveness, the Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu wrote the following:

“Forgiveness is taking seriously the awfulness of what has happened when you are treated unfairly. It is opening the door for the other person to have a chance to begin again. Without forgiveness, resentment builds in us a resentment which turns into hostility and anger”.


If all that sounds a bit too woolly for my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench, let me pray in aid a Conservative Lord Chancellor who said in the House of Commons:

“It is because I am a Conservative that I believe in the rule of law as the foundation stone of our civilisation; it is because I am a Conservative that I believe that evil must be punished; but it is also because I am a Conservative, and a Christian, that I believe in redemption, and I think that the purpose of our prison system and our criminal law is to keep people safe by making people better”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/1/16; col. 149.]


Those were the words of my right honourable friend Michael Gove in 2016, someone who in the intervening years has demonstrated the benefits of political redemption.

When my noble and learned friend responds to this debate, can he say whether the purpose of prison is still to keep people safe by making people better? If so, when will we have an opportunity to scrutinise the effectiveness of the Government in doing so? Custodial sentences have an important part to play in keeping the public safe and ensuring justice is seen to be done; but an over-focus on longer sentences resulting in an ever larger prison population without an equivalent focus on redemption and rehabilitation may only serve to ensure that those people leave custody bitter but not necessarily better.