Sentencing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, indicated, the motivation behind Amendment 34 is broadly similar to what he has just described in his own amendments. Indeed, later in the Bill, at some point next week, there is a series of amendments that I have laid, working with Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, specifically to try to make sure that when we are looking at early release provisions, a particularly hard and clear focus is placed on domestic abuse perpetrators, who have very high levels of recidivism and can be particularly dangerous.

The motivation behind this amendment came partly from an interaction with an organisation in Northern Ireland called the Marie Collins Foundation, which is particularly concerned about yet another acronym I have learned—TACSA—which sounds like an injury to your ankle. It actually means technically assisted child sexual abuse, an activity that is prevalent and growing extremely quickly, assisted by technology. There was a particularly egregious example of a father of several daughters, resident in one of our larger cities outside London, who was found to have drilled a series of holes around his home, particularly into the bathrooms and lavatories, to be able to watch his daughters as they were going about what one does in bathrooms and lavatories. I am afraid this is, believe it or not, not that unusual.

I completely follow the logic that has been put forward by several noble Lords, including the noble and learned Lord by my side, which is that we should not and must not be too specific in the Bill. But some clear guidance is required, whether that comes from the Sentencing Council or some other bodies. While I am not a professional politician, professional politicians in office know all too well the opprobrium and publicity that come their way when—not “if”—somebody is released from prison who should not have been, and does something dreadful yet again, or when somebody who should go to prison does not, for reasons to do with trying to alleviate the pressure on the prison population, and then does something really awful. Everybody will say: “Why didn’t we pick that up at the time?”.

We need to think about this very carefully. I understand fully the reasons behind why we are trying to alleviate the pressure on prisons and His Majesty’s occasionally loyal Opposition have quite a lot to answer for, given the state we are currently in. But we need to be very careful about this; that is really all I have to say.