King’s Speech

Lord Macdonald of River Glaven Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, I first got to know Lord Judge well when I was a pretty raw and inexperienced DPP and he became president of the Queen’s Bench Division and head of criminal justice in the Court of Appeal. He was kind, wise and, where necessary, sympathetically firm. These were wonderful qualities in a judge, a Lord Convenor and a friend. I also congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, on his maiden speech. I am sure that his contributions to your Lordships’ House will be important and necessary in the years ahead.

From time to time, both major parties have played their part in an arms race in criminal sentencing. They sometimes seem to want to outbid each other in sentencing policy, no doubt in the belief that this is worth votes. They may, of course, be right about that, but it is surely the role of Governments and Oppositions to sometimes lead and not simply follow. This is particularly true on questions of public policy, where the public mood may not always coincide with what is best. This is an aspect of representative, rather than delegative, democracy.

Everyone involved in British penal policy knows that incarceration is horrendously expensive, that much of the prison estate is crumbling through lack of investment, that inspectors’ reports on prison conditions are frequently a national embarrassment, and, perhaps worst of all, that recidivism rates are appalling and not improving. The figures no doubt reflect, in part, the inadequate provision of rehabilitative schemes. The Government are prepared to grow the prison population by increasing sentences, reducing parole and restricting remission, but they are not prepared to pay for a sufficient increase in prison places to accommodate these policies, for the necessary improvements to the prison estate or for proper rehabilitation to minimise reoffending. In the end, all of this hurts the public.

Perhaps recognising this failure in joined-up policy-making, the Government’s 2021 spending review promised 20,000 new prison places. But by June of this year, only 5,200 of these places had materialised and, according to the Ministry of Justice, we will have just 8,200 by May 2025. The full 20,000 will not be on stream until 2030—if we are lucky. One project has apparently been delayed by the discovery of a badger sett.

In the face of this, our prison population reached over 86,000 in February this year, the highest in western Europe. It is projected to rise to over 94,000 by March 2025, and we are told that it could reach over 108,000 by 2027. As Sir Bob O’Neill, the respected Conservative chair of the Commons Justice Committee, has said, you cannot keep trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot.

The result of this dispiriting cycle of poor public policy is disgraceful prison conditions almost designed to perpetuate criminal behaviour, ad hoc early release schemes, frankly embarrassing threats to decant British prisoners to jails abroad, and, perhaps most undignified of all, judges having to delay sentencing hearings so that convicted people on bail will not have to be sent to over-capacity prisons just yet.

It should not be beyond the capacity of the British state to design a penal policy that tends towards rehabilitation, that does not rely on emergency release schemes, that does not force us to pay other countries to house our convicts, and that allows judges to get on with the business of dispensing timely justice.

I strongly welcome the brave and sensible approach the Secretary of State has taken to less serious offending and his proposal to reduce—I hope drastically—the number of people sent to prison on short sentences that allow no time for rehabilitation and for which rates of recidivism are so high. However, I am concerned about proposals to abolish remission altogether for certain categories of serious crime, for two reasons. First, remission works as an essential form of behaviour control, particularly in crowded, understaffed prisons. This policy will make the already difficult task of prison staff harder and more dangerous still. Secondly, there is no doubt that this dam, once breached, will breach again. I predict that, if the Government pursue this, the categories of offence with no or reduced remission will grow and the prison population will ramp up.

Finally, what is proposed on whole-life sentences is a very significant change that will greatly increase the number of prisoners serving whole-life terms in our prisons. Can the Minster tell us whether the Government have calculated by how many, or what the impact on prisoner management might be?

It is no insult to the victims of crime to acknowledge that there is a hierarchy of evil in criminal conduct and that whole life has always been reserved for the very worst crimes. The murderer of Zara Aleena, whose sentencing may have played some part in this proposal, committed a terrible crime, and her bereaved family have behaved with extraordinary dignity ever since. In the end, the Court of Appeal decided that the killer deserved a minimum sentence of 33 years but, as the Lady Chief Justice pointed out, that does not mean he was getting a sentence of 33 years. His sentence was life. It simply meant that he was being told that he must serve at least 33 years before he would even be considered for parole. Thirty-three years is a severe penalty, yet the reality is likely to be much harsher.

It is widely recognised by commentators of all political persuasions—indeed, it has become a commonplace observation—that some of these criminal justice proposals in the gracious Speech amount to an attempt by the Government to create political space between themselves and the Opposition in advance of next year’s general election. That is a depressing way for the Government to steward criminal justice.