Sentencing Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, and I join others in the House in paying tribute to Baroness Newlove. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I was very taken with my noble and learned friend Lord Burnett of Maldon saying that lengthening sentences does not necessarily improve reoffending. It is quite an interesting thought.

I am not a lawyer, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, but I have retained an interest in sentencing and imprisonment following many years as a trustee of the Koestler Trust, which puts arts into prisons. The whole purpose of this is to give prisoners access to self-expression through the arts and music, which in turn enables a degree of hope. Hope is a very important word to which I will return.

There are two matters that I would particularly like to address. The first is IPP—perhaps not surprisingly, given what I have just said. In some cases, this simply precludes hope. Although the Minister is making no changes to IPP in this Bill, I am nevertheless very grateful to him for his attention to this, and I detect a genuine concern and a desire to improve the situation. That is as it should be. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, referred to the late and much-missed Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood; we need to sit up and take note when such a legal expert as he was is moved to declare IPP as the single greatest stain on the British judicial system.

As we have heard, the Howard League recommended a change in Parole Board practice so that it sets a definite date for the release of each prisoner within a two-year window, and then specifies what the prisoner must accomplish, with professional support, to achieve that. The noble Lord, Lord Woodley, convincingly advocated for a resentencing policy to which I was greatly attracted, and still am.

The IPP sentence was introduced by the former Labour Government in 2003, supposedly to protect the public from dangerous offenders. It was, in effect, a life sentence for those who have not committed serious offences, such as murder, that would usually attract a life sentence. The sentence was abolished by the former coalition Government in 2012, but the abolition did not apply to those who were already serving the sentence. Over a decade after its abolition, some 2,422 prisoners are still shamefully languishing in custody under the sentence.

Dr Alice Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, has described the IPP as an “inhumane” punishment that

“often amounts to psychological torture”.

If noble Lords feel that is an overdramatic description, I invite them to imagine themselves in the same position: behind bars, unable to make progress, with no hope of getting out. That is an intolerable situation.

I turn to joint enterprise, which has not really been mentioned in the Bill but which I and many others think should be. There has been growing alarm over Crown Prosecution Service data, from organisations such as Liberty, showing that black people are disproportionately prosecuted under joint enterprise, and that a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that the law had been wrongly implemented for more than 30 years has had “no discernible impact” on the number of prosecutions. In her report, Nisha Waller said:

“Joint enterprise is unjustifiably vague and wide in scope. Law reform will not eradicate institutional racism and broader issues with police and prosecution practice. However, the current law encourages the overcharging of suspects and allows cases to be propelled forward based on poor quality evidence. Prosecutors are then left to fill the gaps with speculative case theories and often racialised narratives from which juries are invited to infer joint responsibility”.


I am sure we can all imagine a young boy, under the influence and maybe in fear of older peers, feeling he must follow his comrades without fully realising the implications of what is happening. I would be very interested to know whether the Minister feels that there is equality proportionate to culpability in cases of joint enterprise. Should this not form part of the Bill?

Finally, I am very sympathetic to those who have argued that prisoners convicted of domestic abuse or stalking, and who have been recalled, will not have thrown off that obsessive behaviour after 56 days. That is a really important point.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I will say a brief word and apologise that I have another commitment in 15 minutes, so may not hear the Minister.

I back up what all speakers have said this afternoon—in particular the passionate and convincing words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. We all believe that the Minister’s heart is in the right place and we need to encourage him to go back to anyone who is putting constraints on what he can do and ask them to read the speeches from this afternoon. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, the state has recognised other cases—the Post Office Horizon scandal, infected blood, to some extent Hillsborough, and others—where it has created a major injustice and has tried to make up for those miscarriages. This is not a technical issue, it is an ethical issue, and we are all begging the Minister to deliver the justice that has been called for from all sides of the House this afternoon.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, put his finger on something very important when he said to us that we must be careful about giving hope and then dashing it. But without hope, what is there? That is the point the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, made and it is why I say that I have rarely sat in this Chamber and listened to such powerful speeches.

I was very happy to hear once again that the Minister welcomes this, because he is so involved with rehabilitation. The problem for a lot of these people is that there is no rehabilitation, and that is why we really have to act now.

I am not going to recap everything I said at Second Reading, but I will pick up one point. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, who spared some time to talk to me about joint enterprise, which in some ways is connected to this. I have had a further discussion with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who has more ideas that I hope the Minister might be prepared to hear.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

What we have in front of us at the moment are essentially two clear ideas. I signed the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, but equally I will support the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, because clearly we need to move forward and this Government have to understand that we are not going to give up. It is unbelievable that we are still talking about this. Has it been years—I have lost track—that we in this House have more or less agreed we have to do something, yet the Government’s intransigence has just shocked us all? I do not think we have a choice: if this amendment does not pass, or if it does, we will still persist, we will still keep raising it and we will still keep pushing the Government, because they are in the wrong.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I was schooled in this subject, if I was schooled at all, by the late noble and learned Lords, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Judge. They both took me through this and were absolutely certain in what they were saying: noble Lords will have heard Lord Brown’s verdict that this is possibly the greatest stain on our judicial system. As the Minister knows, I feel very strongly about this, and indeed joint enterprise.

But the thing that I would like to talk about very briefly is proportionality. I am very attracted both to the solution from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and to that from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Earlier, we heard the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, arguing very eloquently and successfully on Amendment 74. Equally, we heard the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, putting a very strong case from his point of view. But the fact is that some of the people in prison for this are not in prison for things anywhere near as serious as the things that noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, mentioned and that the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, said would be okay, because they would be carefully scrutinised.

There are people serving endless sentences who were originally sentenced only to 18 months in prison. They are still there. Their families are still concerned. We have to look at proportionality. What were they originally sentenced for? How long were they sentenced for? How does that colour the views of the Parole Board or judges? I think that is an essential point which leads us to feel shame: people are in prison for very minor offences compared with rape and murder, and are there on an original sentence that was relatively minor compared with those for murder and rape. So we really do have to look at this.

I will not go on any longer. I just implore the Minister to use the mercy and clemency he has shown so clearly in dealing with the prison system in this case. There is a unanimous feeling around the House: nobody yet has gone against the point we are all making that something has to be done.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, to start with, I would just like to point out that the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, is undoubtedly personally committed to resolving this issue. Nobody, I think, is making any party-political points and nobody is personally having a go at the Minister. But that is not sufficient for us to go home with tonight. We still have to say that, regardless of how honourable and wonderful the Minister might be, IPP has dragged on. So I will be voting for the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, but since he spoke so brilliantly to start this debate, all the speeches have been as though I have never heard the subject before. I feel like crying, I feel like screaming. In other words, this is an incredibly important scandal that gets to you every time, and gets to members of the public every time when you share it with them. They are equally appalled; they cannot believe it.

One of the points that I noted from the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, is that it will make the indeterminate determinate; there will be an end in sight. Apart from anything else, never mind the sentences, I feel as though this debate is indeterminate and going on for ever, because I seem to have repeated it endlessly. When I heard UNGRIPP making the point that for the current decrease in the IPP prison population it will take a minimum of 11 years to release everyone currently on an IPP sentence—that is, 31 years since its introduction and 24 years since its official abolition—you do think, “It’s got to end”. Nobody is doing this as a joke or a game to just make the same kinds of speeches.

Amendment 96, from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, particularly appeals to me. I am not always a fan of judges, it has to be said, but one of the things I like about it is that every single prisoner would be looked at, and each and every circumstance would be considered. That is very important, because there have been times when it has been made to sound like one size fits all—you know what I mean, release them all or what have you. This has the advantage of taking into consideration every single circumstance and what particular prisoners would need. I think that is very important.

Something that I do not think has had enough mention tonight is that in some instances the resolution is that a prisoner will need to be transferred to a hospital, and it might not be straightforward to release them from hospital. They might be very seriously ill at that point. But the main thing would be, because the end would be in sight, if they were ever well enough to be released from hospital, they would not then go back to prison on the IPP sentence that very often has made them ill in the first instance. I want to quote a psychiatrist who said, “How do you motivate somebody to take part in treatment at a hospital if the outcome of that is effectively to facilitate their return to prison?” That is a terrible tragedy.

I will just finish with an anecdote, because it makes the point. Rob Russell, who is on an IPP sentence and in prison at the moment, was sentenced in 2009 for making threats to kill his former partner. I hope I have illustrated today, when I have spoken, that I am not a fan of being soft on perpetrators of domestic abuse. This is somebody who threatened to kill his former partner. He was sentenced in 2009 and has never been released. He is now in hospital. I want him to get well, but I do not want him to go back to the IPP sentence. Can you imagine if he gets well and goes back to prison? He could be on the same landing as somebody who has been convicted for domestic violence, not threats but actually committing violence against their partner: but as that person is on a standard determinate sentence, they could be offered early release—“Earn your way to release”—but Rob will not be, whereas he actually just threatened. I honest to God think that is grotesque.

The Minister today, who I am a great admirer of, justified the risks of freeing people early who have been violent on the basis of freeing up space in prisons, because we have to protect victims and give them space. IPPers might well present a risk when they are freed into the community, but, as has now been explained, so will all those people on early release that we have just discussed all day. There is no doubt that something will happen with some of them. I do not wish it; I just know it. The fact that those serving an IPP sentence have to prove every time that they will never do anything again is ludicrous. If I was Rob, who has been mentally ill, and I had to compare myself with this person who is getting out early, the sense of frustration and hopelessness would honestly make my mental health deteriorate again.

So I simply think that it has to end and we have to do whatever is required. The Minister would be helped if it was legislative. Whichever amendment works, works for me; I will vote for it. This cannot carry on. I know that is too melodramatic. I just mean that, genuinely, this needs to end. It is grotesque in the context of this Sentencing Bill, releasing people for a wide range of reasons when we cannot release people who are in prison decades after their tariff for minor things, and we will not even look at assessing each of them to see whether they might be safe beyond the IPP Parole Board. It is just ridiculous.