Prison and Probation Service

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

That this House takes note of the state of the prison and probation service in England and Wales.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all who will contribute this afternoon. It is an impressive list, and I am looking forward to hearing some valuable contributions to what is, at the present time, a very important subject. I thank you for making time after a busy week. I particularly welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, who is making his maiden speech here. I am looking forward to hearing his wisdom, of which he has much in this regard. I received a very supportive email from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, who is prisons Bishop. She is at the College of Bishops this week and is unable to attend, but she wants us to know that she would have been here if she could have been.

This is a highly relevant debate to the public. The current state of our Prison and Probation Service constantly plays out on front pages of newspapers and online media sites. One of my pleas today is for politicians to resist the media drama, particularly of a single case, and keep rehabilitation at the forefront. The fact is that punishment is deprivation of liberty, not grim conditions. On today’s news, we heard that temporary prefabricated cells, sized for one, are now being fitted with bunk beds. Ten years ago, or more, former Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick described such circumstances to the Commons Justice Committee, saying that many prisoners are now effectively living in toilets. Headlines about prison spaces running out should not be ignored.

In August 2026, the total prison population was 86,843, which is 97.6% of the usable capacity. As around 96% are men, it is unrealistic to treat the women’s estate as a readily available solution to male overcapacity. The Government’s female offender strategy admits that some have committed crimes of such gravity that custody is the only sentencing option. Of course, women should be in prison if they have committed serious offences.

The range of contributors to current major capacity pressures includes the increase in convictions for sexual offences. Many are historic, but their devastating effects on victims do not expire. There has also been sentencing inflation of 45% over the past 15 years. A response in no small part to penal populism has also clogged up our prisons and today’s need for early release of prisoners is a predictable consequence.

It is ironic that a “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality necessitated the proposed earlier release of heinous criminals at the top of the new Prime Minister’s in-tray of wicked policy issues. Early releases started under the previous Conservative Government, with their end of custody supervised licence emergency response, which allowed eligible prisoners to be released up to 18 and then 70 days before their automatic release date. But eligibility excluded many serious offences. During the 2010s, the Government found money for new prison places, which will only become available under this Government, and this Government will get the credit—whatever. Short-termism does not work in penal policy. Even when a prison has opened under a highly experienced governor, it takes time to fill up gradually. We are building a community, not stocking a warehouse.

The current scheme of early release cannot be characterised as a continuation of end of custody supervised licence. Moving the standard release point from 50% to 40% and now 33% represents such a significant change in the proportion of the custodial sentence spent in prison that sentencing is becoming increasingly meaningless. This is very worrying for public confidence in the courts and judiciary when they are under exceptional strain. We need sentences that are understandable and reflect the seriousness of the crime but also recognise the possibility and need for rehabilitation. Given the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, I hope he will comment on this, and I will say no more.

One of my main points today is that the issue of prison capacity took the previous Government’s attention away from rehabilitation, and that trend has continued. The terms of reference for the Rudd review barely mention it. While it is a theme in the call for evidence, it does not look like a priority. Neither document mentions the importance of good relationships, despite them being essential to rehabilitation and to many other Rudd review priorities, such as safety, decency and strategy for future prison build. Yet I find HMPPS staff are very committed in this area. Their transforming prisons directorate is creatively building the importance of relationships into future prisons, but it is hard for them to build this culture without the oxygen of ministerial and political support.

The 2016 White Paper, Prison Safety and Reform—in which my first review for the Government was announced—was also focused on Rudd review emergency issues, such as safety, security, new-build prisons and staffing pressures. However, it treated rehabilitation—prisoner reform—as equally important and called for

“a huge cultural and structural change within our prisons—a transformation away from offender warehouses to disciplined and purposeful centres of reform where all prisoners get a second chance at leading a good life”.

The MoJ’s own data showed the powerful positive rehabilitation effects of contact with families and significant ties. They exceed those of, say, education and employment, and provide the motivation for the latter—hence my reviews said that relationships should be the golden thread running through all the processes of prison and probation. Narrowly seeing this as only good family visits misses the fact that everything is mediated through relationships—relationships between governors and their officers, officers and the prisoners, prisoners and other prisoners, the prison and the community that surrounds it, and the prison estate and the society that it is part of—however difficult it might to define and cost them. The culture of prisons and probation needs to change so that a relational approach becomes business as usual, working with the grain of what it is to be human rather than against it. That is how professionals in the Youth Custody Service strive to operate. Yet when young people make the transition to the adult estate, too often they still fall over a cliff edge into a relational desert.

It is 10 years since the Government commissioned my first review and accepted all its recommendations, but its emphasis on relational culture is frequently cut across by policy decisions. In response to understandable public outrage over non-attendance at sentence hearings, prison rules have been changed so that, as a general sanction, governors can remove all social visits for up to 27 days and restrict social visits to one visit in every 28 days for up to 84 days. Prisoners’ children can still visit, but that sanction rules out a very large range of other potentially prosocial visitors. When relationships wither, as they can quickly do when you are in jail, this might remove a key reforming influence on a troublemaker.

One of the most extrovert prisons I visited, HMP Norwich—with its tourist café run by prisoners in open conditions—holds a surgery for family members every week so that the deputy governor can hear their concerns. The deputy governor told me about the mother fighting her teenage son’s corner after he had given her a sob story about how badly he had been treated, and how she turned that mother into an ally by saying, “He’s doing himself no favours. You need to help us help him get through this as well as possible”.

I am also concerned about fathers in prison who might lose parental responsibility when the Courts and Tribunals Bill abolishes the rebuttable presumption in the Children Act 1989 that children’s best interests are typically served by both parents’ involvement. Being in prison does not automatically make someone a bad or damaging father or mother, but removing the presumption will make it easier to argue that they are not needed. Can the Minister confirm whether any guidance will be issued to mitigate that possible unintended consequence for these parents and their children—who are at a profound legal disadvantage—if the Bill becomes law?

Such examples suggest that the culture is still punitive rather than rehabilitative. The problem with culture is its apparent intangibility for policy purposes, but its effects are anything but intangible. Where there is a culture of each government department or public service working separately and territorially, people fall through the cracks between operational silos. That still happens, despite the duty to refer when people released from prison are at risk of becoming homeless. Some local housing authorities work very well with prisons and probation and secure accommodation for prisoners, despite similar pressures on their housing stock as less integrated local councils. According to Nacro, last year in the north-west, 12% of people leaving prison were released into homelessness, compared with more than 20% of people released in south-central. If agencies in every region collaborated as well as they do in the north-west, there would be 3,700 fewer people released to homelessness every year, potentially preventing 1,500 reoffences.

The proven reoffending rate of those released homeless—76%—was more than twice that of those released from custody into settled accommodation, at 36.4%. Some 4,500 inmates will be released early in 10 tranches between 1 October and 1 June next year, in addition to the 4,500 regular releases that take place each month. Prisons and probation are on the front line of the Prime Minister’s pledge to end rough sleeping. Almost one in six are released homeless, and the most recent snapshot found that half of all rough sleepers had been in prison at some point and that 15% of them had been released within the last year. This Government’s national plan to end homelessness calls out the deficiencies of the duty to refer and promises to legislate for a duty to collaborate as soon as parliamentary time allows.

I tabled amendments to the Social Housing Bill to seize that legislative opportunity, but unfortunately to no avail. I was even told by the responding Minister that the duty to refer was working fine, so my amendments, which would have brought the Government’s own proposed reforms into statute, were not needed. It was rather an Alice through the looking-glass moment. Can the Minister report any new progress on bringing the duty to collaborate into law? What is being done to ensure that prisoners have good relationships and that someone is there when they are released, not just accommodation?

One of the most effective ways to prevent homelessness after release is to maintain existing family and other relationships, or enable prisoners to build supportive connections both inside and outside prison. Effective peer mentoring schemes are creating valuable communities of support that start in prison but go beyond the gate for prisoners who have no contact with their families and cannot hope to have. Sex offenders, for example, lumped together as a universally heinous, also need to be given a second chance. Programmes such as these should become business as usual. When well supervised, they can be powerfully therapeutic.

Trusted relationships can bring home to a prisoner the criminogenic influences they have to shrug off if they are to change. They create a sense of agency and dispel despair. Peer support can be game-changing for the 25% of male and female prisoners who are care experienced. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act requires prisons and probation to share corporate parenting responsibilities as part of a new, highly relational approach to care leavers. Peer support is key to fulfilling this. Can the Minister provide an overview of the spread of peer mentoring in prisons and support in English and Welsh prisons? Are there are any plans to integrate them into the Probation Service?

The 19th-century social reformer Elizabeth Fry branded our violent and squalid prisons the “nurseries of crime”. She said:

“The better the actual state of our prisons is known and understood, the more clearly will all men see the necessity of these arrangements by which they may be rendered schools of industry and virtue”.


I will finish on one neglected relationship that I have already mentioned: between the prison and probation system and wider society. Most prisoners will be released back into that wider society, which needs to know and understand what it takes to reform someone who has transgressed, how to prioritise rehabilitation and how to prioritise good relationships while still being appropriately tough on crime. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for securing this important debate and all noble Lords who have contributed this afternoon to what has been a sober but very humane debate. Noble Lords will know that not every debate about prisons has those characteristics, so I very much appreciate that.

For many years, the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has brought sustained attention to the purpose of imprisonment and to the vital role that families and strong, stable relationships can play in rehabilitation. We are very grateful to him. I declare my own interest: I was the lead non-executive director of HMPPS until 2025. I chaired its agency board and had the pleasure and the privilege of meeting the noble Lord and talking with him, particularly about the work my then colleagues at HMPPS were doing on the relational model, which he was a champion of and is at the heart of what we are all discussing.

I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, on a magnificent maiden speech. I am proud to say that I have read both parts of the noble and learned Lord’s court review, twice. He looks shocked, but I have, and I look forward to working with him very closely, as does everyone at the Ministry of Justice.

I will start with the most immediate pressure on prison capacity. I take the challenge from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, not to indulge in the blame game very seriously, and I will try not to. I will also try not to recite lots of things other people have said before and that your Lordships already know. I am all too conscious that I alone stand between noble Lords and Recess, so I shall be concise but thorough.

On all these comments about prison capacity, I am not, as I say, going to indulge in the blame game. In two regards, the comments many noble Lords have made highlight the heart of this problem and the theme we will return to again and again. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, mentioned the great increase in sentence length. This is at the heart of the long-running difficulty with prison capacity. Noble Lords do not need me to tell them that, in the context of a prison capacity crisis, many if not all the things noble Lords have said they value in prisons—such as education, regime, healthcare and rehabilitation—are the first to suffer in overcrowded prisons with overstretched staff. So, we have to get the capacity crisis under control.

I am not going to bandy figures around, but we are providing 14,000 additional prison places and we will continue to make a commitment to prison building. On that, I just say to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that we are not suggesting that the prison numbers will come down or that the prison building programme may, in the end, not prove adequate. We recognise that this is an ongoing thing and will go on for a very long time, perhaps even for a decade. I entirely agree with the comment by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that we cannot build our way out of this capacity challenge, though build we must.

On sentencing, measures already in force include the presumption to suspend prison sentences of 12 months or less. The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, talked about short sentences, and those are subject to important exceptions. Our view is that short spells in custody disrupt housing arrangements, employment and drug treatment. They are not good for mental health and, crucially, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said, the family ties that are at the heart of preventing further offending.

Where offenders can be punished and managed safely in the community—I do not apologise for the use of the word “punishment”—we should use that opportunity to both supervise them effectively and tackle the underlying causes of their offending, reserving prisons for those who most need to be there and from whom the public need to be protected. Over the coming months, we will implement the progression model that was at the heart of David Gauke's recommendations and at the heart of the Sentencing Act. I have had the opportunity to discuss that with many noble Lords before today. This is almost the most important building block to a changed landscape for prisons.

I make this offer to noble Lords in the spirit of my noble friend Lord Timpson; noble Lords can consider me a sort of polyester version of my noble friend. We need to make sure that the whole approach of the Sentencing Act—a third in custody, a third under intensive supervision—is understood much better by the public, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, and others have said. I would be very happy to arrange a presentation from our officials on exactly how this is going to work and how we are preparing for it.

It means a tougher probation service. I was very mindful of the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, who I am working with on youth custody, as well. We are asking the Probation Service to do something really quite difficult, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, made clear. We are asking it to improve itself after a long history of troubles that started with the failed privatisation, and to take on many new responsibilities under the intensive supervision model. We know that is challenging.

I have talked about the money. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, has asked me again about contingency planning. The question of government funding and the need for more funding is something we talk about all the time in the Ministry of Justice, as noble Lords can imagine. We will approach the spending review in the usual optimistic spirit.

I want to recognise, finally, on this question of the progression model, that we listened to some of the concerns of victims and their families about the changes. As noble Lords know, we changed some of the exemptions, but we recognise that changing release arrangements can cause victims and their families a great deal of uncertainty and distress. That is why stronger supervision and support for victims are so important in the Government’s approach.

I now turn to prison safety and security, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned. Prisons must be places of safety, security and order, where staff can do their jobs, prisoners can engage in a constructive regime—particularly in education and training for employment—and genuine rehabilitation can take place. As I have said, all this is made much more difficult by serious overcrowding, overstretched staff and inadequate facilities. Drugs, illicit mobile phones and drones fuel violence, criminal activity, debt and intimidation; they undermine staff authority and make turning lives around substantially harder.

At the heart of what we need to do is ensuring effective security. It is essential. That is why we are investing in both the fabric and the security of our prisons, including an additional £35 million this financial year—we get some money out of the Treasury—to strengthen counter-drone security in prisons where there is the greatest threat. We are also working closely with law enforcement partners to disrupt those bringing drugs, weapons and other contraband into prisons.

Our prison officers perform a demanding public service and I take my hat off to them. They need the confidence, training and support to maintain order and build the constructive relationships that help offenders turn their backs on crime for good.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Reay, as of June this year, prison officer staffing stood at 92% of our target level and prison officer resignation rates are at their lowest in five years. It is obviously a difficult labour market, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, highlighted. Many pressures remain, particularly in hard-to-staff prisons, but we have made an enormous effort—going back to my days in HMPPS—on recruitment, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Foster, would recognise.

Many noble Lords have highlighted that a safe prison must also be a purposeful one. Most people who enter prison, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, highlighted, will eventually return to the community. This is a simple statement of fact that is too readily ignored. Nearly 80% of offenders are reoffenders and therefore we have a responsibility to use the time spent in custody as effectively as we can, as many noble Lords have emphasised. Our approach is to help individuals develop skills and secure employment and stable accommodation, and to provide access to treatment for substance misuse and mental health needs.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, we meet regularly with Dame Carol Black and are working with her on the findings of her report. My colleagues and I would be very happy to meet the noble Lord and his colleagues to discuss the AI tool he was describing. All these efforts in health care and accommodation go to the heart of the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, that through all these things we are trying to maintain positive relationships. That is a good and humane thing to do, regardless of anything else: it is a good in itself. Effective rehabilitation nevertheless sits alongside punishment and robust supervision as an essential part of protecting the public. Every offence prevented means one fewer victim.

I recognise the comments made by my noble friend Lord Winston, which were utterly compelling, about the effect on the brain. I have seen research along those lines, and this is a very important area for us to develop. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, will know that we have discussed previously the whole question of gambling and gambling addiction. My noble friend Lord Timpson made some progress on that, and I hope we can continue that. I have no doubt that I will have many opportunities to discuss that with the noble Lord, Lord Foster.

Purposeful activity can have a transformative effect. We are expanding vocational training and apprenticeships and improving links with employers and access to education. Our track record on getting prisoners into jobs when they leave has improved. My noble friend Lord Timpson put a great deal of emphasis on that. We are seeing progress. The proportion of prison leavers in employment six months after release increased to 36.5% in the year to March 2026. We know we have a long way to go, but we are making some progress.

I turn to the question of family and other relationships, which the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, described as the golden thread. The evidence bears this out. Research shows that prisoners who received visits were three percentage points less likely to reoffend within one year of release. But as I have said, I regard that as a good thing in itself, whatever the statistics are telling us. I am delighted that they confirm my view. The prison gates should not be a cliff edge, for all the reasons I have set out. Prisons, probation, local authorities, health services and employment support must work as one system. Of course, there are many difficulties and that is why, alongside MHCLG, we have committed to halve the proportion of prison leavers released to no fixed abode and to increase the proportion in settled accommodation by the end of this Parliament.

I want to say a few words about probation. I thank probation staff for the vital work they do every day to protect the public and support rehabilitation. It is easy to be critical, but we also need to recognise their efforts and their achievements. They have been asked to carry too much for too long. We are responding with the investment that a number of noble Lords have referred to. We have already recruited 2,300 new probation officers over the past year and are recruiting at least 1,300 more in 2026-27. We are rebuilding the service and asking it to take on new responsibilities. Probation officers will have more on their plate, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, said. There is much to be learned from the experience in youth custody—I entirely agree with her about that.

Moving part of a sentence from custody into the community, as we are, does not mean the end of punishment. We are giving probation the toughest range of tools ever to manage offenders, including tough licence conditions, electronic tagging on a scale never seen before, curfews, restriction zones, and recall to prison where those conditions are breached. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, spoke about recalls, and I answered a question yesterday from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, on IPPs and recalls. I am very happy to take that away and get back to the noble and learned Lord and everyone who has spoken in this debate about exactly what we are doing to address that trend.

One of the things we are already aware of is that, once someone has been recalled, the time taken to get to a parole decision before they can be released is something we need to address. But I do not at all demur from the general challenge, and I will return to it. Again, as I have said about this progression model, my officials will be very happy to arrange a session on the changes to probation so that noble Lords can feel more confident, at least, of the steps we are taking to build a Probation Service for the future.

I will say something about women offenders and female offenders, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. Female offenders often have distinct and complex needs. Many are victims themselves, with histories of trauma, abuse, mental health and addiction, and many are mothers. That is why our long-term aim is to reduce the number of women in prison and, in particular, pregnant women and mothers of young children. That is a particular commitment of ours, to which we shall be addressing ourselves with energy. We have announced—this refers to what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, was talking about—the expansion of intensive supervision courts for women, which will use a multi-agency approach to address the root causes of offending. This is an important development, which we shall watch very carefully to see if it may help in other areas too. We are also investing in voluntary and community sector provision to help prevent offending and divert women away from the criminal justice system in the first place. The Sentencing Act’s presumption to suspend sentences is expected to reduce the number of women entering prison by about a third. However, custody will, of course, remain necessary when the seriousness of the offence or the protection of the public requires it.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and one or two other noble Lords mentioned the Government’s decision on IPPs. I am very proud of that. We are continuing the regular meetings with interested Peers. Indeed, the Lord Chancellor himself is attending the next one—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, looks very impressed. The independent review of the prison system, chaired by Amber Rudd, will examine the long-term reforms needed to build a prison system fit for the future, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, has challenged us to do. She will report later this year, and I and my ministerial colleagues will be working closely with her on that.

We must protect the public, and we must stand with victims. Serious offenders must be punished appropriately. Those released into the community must be robustly supervised, and we must reduce the likelihood of further offending. If we succeed in this, that will mean fewer crimes and fewer victims. I note the comments noble Lords have made on foreign national offenders and on remand. This is all part of the approach we need for getting prison numbers to a more sustainable future.

I hope I have addressed the principal points raised, but I will read Hansard with my officials carefully and write on points I have failed to address. I will say this: in my short time in this job, and indeed before, I have worked with many noble Lords in this House on these issues. I regard this as a collaborative, cross-party venture—I was going to say adventure; it is certainly a venture. I know noble Lords from across the House are working with us on IPPs, but I hope we can continue to work together more widely.

In closing, I reiterate my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for tabling this Motion and giving us the opportunity to have this debate. None of the problems that noble Lords have highlighted should prevent us paying tribute to those who work tirelessly across our Prison and Probation Service. They undertake, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, noted, difficult and demanding work on behalf of us all. I wish noble Lords a very good Recess. I hope you do not go to too many conferences, but before that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, will respond.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

I am the barrier between everyone and Recess.

This has been a good, valuable and collaborative debate. We have worked together. There has not been partisanship. That is important because this is an important and, to be quite frank, depressing subject. The reasons for depression have become apparent from many of the speeches today. I compliment every Member who has contributed today. There have been excellent contributions. I hope that the Hansard of this debate will get some publicity because it needs it. People need to see clearly the problems that are going on in the prison estate, but they also need to see how we can work together and co-operate. I very much liked the emphasis on the prisoner as a human being, which was mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston, but also came over in many speeches. I concur with everybody that it was an honour to have the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, make his maiden speech in this debate. It was a hugely valuable contribution.

I am not going to go on and on because we need to get to Recess and it has been a long day. I thank noble Lords for their valuable contributions. I hope the debate gets widespread impact across Parliament, into the departments of government and out there to the wider public so that they understand the problems in the prison estate at the moment.

Motion agreed.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, we are about to go into Recess, so I take this opportunity to thank all the staff of the House for their hard work and support and wish them and, indeed, all noble Lords a restful Recess. I hope noble Lords enjoy their party conference, if they are attending.