Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord McNally Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester. I commend the work of the chaplaincy service in prisons. I also welcome this debate, inspired as it is by the report of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Timpson, must have been feeling a little battered about two-thirds of the way through the speech by my noble friend Lord Foster. He probably had a note from his office saying that my noble friend is a Liberal Democrat and is sympathetic to his aims. This is what makes my noble friend such a formidable politician: he does not pull his punches, but he does not mean any harm.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord McNally (LD)]

That came out wrong. When he referred to the Government’s response to the White Paper, he also reminded me of my old friend, Fred Peart. Fred was Leader of the House a long time ago. He had an absolutely fail-safe way of answering questions, however hostile. When there was a request for action, he would stand up, repeat it and then say, “I have to tell the noble Lord that it will not be next week”. I thought that the Government’s response was, as my noble friend Lord Foster delicately implied, a “not next week” reply. There are so many times when they adopt the suggestion but do not make any practical advance. This is one of the problems.

When the Government were elected some 18 months ago, one of the most welcome appointments was that of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, as Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending. I served at the Ministry of Justice from 2010 to 2013 as Minister of State under the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, and from 2014 to 2017 as chair of the Youth Justice Board. My delight at the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, was because, during those seven years as a Minister and then as YJB chair, I had worked closely with the noble Lord, his brother and their late father in the pioneering work that the Timpson family has done in helping and assisting the rehabilitation of offenders.

I was further encouraged by the fact that the noble Lord would be joined in the battle for prison reform by my successor as YJB chair, Charlie Taylor. Since 2020, he has been His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons. My only fear is that the sheer scale and multifaceted nature of the crisis in our prisons would break their spirits because of the magnitude of the task faced.

I will raise a couple of points on which the Minister may want to comment. I am genuinely worried about the retreat on education. I know the budgetary problems that are faced and I commend the work done by David Gauke on the sentencing review. But, as has been said by a number of speakers, the education of prisoners is one of the key ways to rehabilitation. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, raised the problem of drugs. The general public just do not understand why drugs should be so effectively and proficiently available in our prisons. The man in the street wants to know how they got in there and how this is such a factor in our prisons.

I see that I shall get a commending smile from the Whip by sitting down. Good luck.