Sentencing Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to support what my noble friend has said, and, indeed, to support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester’s amendment. I come, as it were, from a prison background, in the sense that I was Prisons Minister, God help me, 40 years ago. Also, until relatively recently—by which I mean 10 years ago—I was on the monitoring board of one of our local prisons. I agree entirely with my noble friend, and indeed with the right reverend Prelate, about the importance of out-of-cell purposeful activity. I agree too with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that far too often the prison workshops are not functional. That is a very great misfortune.

There are just two points I will make—a proviso and a question. The proviso, in a sense, is self-evident: if a condition is going to be imposed, it can operate only if the purposeful activity is actually provided within the Prison Service. Although that may be implicit in my noble friend’s amendment, it is not explicit. If the Government, in due time, come forward with an appropriate amendment, I hope that the provision is made explicit.

There is a different question, which I would like guidance on, perhaps from the Minister. I suppose it really reveals my own ignorance. If there is a condition that a prisoner is compliant with the requirement for purposeful activity, what is the consequence of non-compliance? My noble friend has addressed that, at least in theory, by her proposed new subsection (2)(b) in Amendment 66, because she contemplates, very sensibly, a report which might lead to the provision denying a prisoner early release for non-compliance, but if there is no consequential legislation to that effect, are there any existing statutory or other binding provisions which would penalise a prisoner who is deliberately not complying with purposeful activity that is made available? There should be, but if there is not any such requirement which can be enforced then my noble friend’s aspirations may prove to be ineffective.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hailsham’s second point illustrates his first point: if there is no purposeful activity available, how can one enforce the denial of an early release by virtue of a person’s failure to comply with a purposeful activity?

I want, briefly, to go back to the late and much lamented Lord Ramsbotham. In his book about prisons, which I know the Minister will have read many times, he said that the three things that will reduce repeat offending are that a prisoner, on release, should have a place to live, should be able to return to a loving relationship and should have a job. I took that very much on board when I wrote a paper nearly 20 years ago entitled Prisons with a Purpose. I wrote it when I was the shadow Prisons Minister, in the days when my noble friend Lord Cameron was the leader of the Opposition.

I visited about 75 prisons, young offender institutions and secure training units during that time. One of the things that struck me was that there were some wonderful examples of purposeful activity going on in a number of prisons but, as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has pointed out, it very much depended on the leadership of the prison. If you had an inadequate governor, you had an inadequate regime within the prison, particularly within the education and training sections of that prison.

I have made a few visits to a number of detention centres and I remember being taken with great pride by the governor on duty to a workshop in a great big shed in a West Midlands category C prison. I will not name it, because things may well have changed by now. In the workshop were adult men aged between 21 and goodness knows what, and they were making hairnets. I have absolutely no doubt that there is a market somewhere for hairnets. But I equally had no doubt then, and have no doubt now, that the prisoners in those workshops, having been released, would never go to work in a hairnet factory. So, it was just time filling.

I went to another prison in Wales, where I saw male adult prisoners sorting blue plastic bits from green plastic bits and putting the blue ones in one tray and the green ones in the other tray. They were apparently parts of some electrical connection system. Again, these are the sorts of activities that would achieve nothing in so far as Lord Ramsbotham’s provisos were to be complied with.

I went to an open prison in the south of England where, far from the prison, prisoners and prison officers taking advantage of the farmland and market garden within their premises, now long closed of course, I found men playing cards behind the wheelbarrow sheds—and who else was in the card game but a couple of prison officers? Again, this is just time filling.

The problem is further exacerbated by prisoner churn. If you are sentenced in, say, Canterbury Crown Court and are sent to Canterbury prison that evening, within a few days or weeks you will be transferred to Maidstone prison to allow others to come in. Maidstone prison will be receiving prisoners from Maidstone Crown Court. The Canterbury prisoners who have been moved to Maidstone will be required to move to Lewes, then from Lewes to Southampton, and from Southampton to Winchester. So there is, metaphorically speaking, a jumbo jet of prisoners moving around the prison estate. How can they do any sensible activity? How can they go on any sensible course if, having barely started it, they are then moved to another prison?

I am happy to advertise on behalf of Timpson. I have seen a number of its workshops in operation in prisons up and down this country, and I have been served in shops by graduates of the Timpson in-house system in prisons. There, people are learning a real job that can translate from inside prison to the high street. They can go out and earn a living, pay their rent and taxes, and look after their dependants. That is the sort of work we need to see done, and more of it, in prisons.

That is why I wholly applaud Amendments 65 and 67, tabled by my noble friend Lord Hailsham: they hit the nail on the head. If we do not have real, genuinely purposeful, activity in prisons, the whole thing is a sham, and you will get repeat offenders coming in and out like a revolving door, and the prison population will simply grow and grow.

So, whether we vote on this or not, it is absolutely essential that the Government get a grip on the way in which training and education are dealt with in our prisons. I know of course that the Minister knows this personally—he has known this for 30 years—but lots of people in government do not, and lots of people at the Treasury do not, either. They do not seem to realise that by reinforcing failure—junk in, junk out—all you are doing is wasting the public’s taxes and not producing one ounce of public safety.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to support my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. We sat together as youth magistrates for many years at the old Hammersmith youth court. She has fully set out what must be an anomaly. I have not heard any explanation in defence of the current situation. She gave the example of two offenders who have committed the same offence at the same time but, because of some geographical issue, were sentenced at different times on either side of their 18th birthday, with different outcomes. They would not have had access to referral orders or youth rehabilitation orders, which are, in our experience, better at rehabilitating young people.

There would also be the problem with the DBS checks. If somebody was subsequently to get or apply for a job, they would get different results in the DBS check depending on whether they were sentenced before or after their 18th birthday. This is an anomaly. I look forward to what my noble friend can say, because this is part of a wider look at how youth DBS records are kept. Nevertheless, this example is a true anomaly. I hope that the Government can be as sympathetic as possible to this amendment.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, in the spirit of friendship, I acknowledge the charming but highly persuasive way in which my noble friend advanced her amendment, which I am only too pleased to support, and recognise the support of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, who is also my friend. I will embarrass him further by saying that he is my very distant kinsman, which will completely ruin his credibility for anything further in his parliamentary life; it is a cross that he will have to bear.

The noble Lord and my noble friend bring to the Chamber years of experience as sitting and sentencing magistrates. Very often in England and Wales, it is magistrates who deal with youth offenders. We should listen to what they have to say and to their experience. I very much to support all that they have said. I urge the Government to pay close attention to what has been said and come forward with proposals of their own, if they do not accept what my noble friend advanced in her amendment, so that we can get rid of this injustice, which is, as the noble Lord said, a most extraordinary anomaly.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 93 and 94. Amendment 93 is concerned with the impact of changes in the law on sentences that are currently being served under the law that was in force preceding the change. In other words, offenders were sentenced under a law that has been altered. The amendment calls for reports to be provided every three years, with a view to such changes in the law leaving defendants suffering from injustice.

Amendment 94 concerns the direct effect of such changes in the law on sentences that are currently being served or that have been imposed. Proposed new subsection (1)(a) in Amendment 94 concerns cases where the offence itself for which the sentence was imposed has been abolished, and proposed new subsection (1)(b) in Amendment 94 concerns a case where the sentence has been materially altered.

The amendment would enable a person serving a sentence for an offence that had been abolished, or where the sentence had been altered, to seek a review of the case of the sentence that is currently being served. On such a review, the sentence originally imposed could be quashed, or there could be a resentencing.

In practice, of course, Amendment 94 would come into play only where either the offence had been abolished or the available sentence had been reduced, because one cannot imagine an offender seeking a change of sentence where the available sentence had been increased.

Underlying both amendments is a concern that changes in the law would have the effect that an offender’s sentence would not have been imposed or would have been less severe had the law at the time of sentencing been the reformed law rather than the law under which the offender was sentenced, and that such changes should take effect to the benefit of the offender who would not be at such risk now.

I would suggest that it is a matter of simple justice that changes in the law which would have resulted in an offender serving a sentence less severe, or not being convicted of any offence, should have the benefit of the change in the law that pertained at the time of sentencing, so that a review would be appropriate.

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[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

I am obliged to the noble Lord. It is intended that the court should have regard only to the two elements that are referred to therein.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, before the Minister gets to his feet, can I rather impertinently squeeze in a request that probably has little to do with Amendment 68? I am doing it now, so there we are.

A few years ago, I, along with other people, conducted a review into the work of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. One of the problems we found is that many prisoners who were dissatisfied with the way their conviction had been arrived at, and the way in which the Court of Appeal had subsequently dealt with it, found it almost impossible to get hold of a transcript of the sentencing remarks. Following the questioning of my noble and learned friend by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, it looks as though such a convicted prisoner would not be able to make use of this amendment to get hold of the sentencing remarks my noble and learned friend is partly complaining about. Can the Government please bear in mind—not tonight obviously—that this is a real practical difficulty for people in prison who feel, for good reason, that they have been improperly convicted and wish to have the CCRC consider their case? It is much more difficult for the CCRC, and certainly for the dissatisfied defendant, to advance their cause if they cannot get hold, either because it is difficult or because it is expensive, of the sentencing remarks.