Criminal Law

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Priti Patel

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker—congratulations on your new role. I welcome the new Front Benchers to their positions, including the Lord Chancellor, whom I have known for a number of years. I congratulate her on taking up the post, as well as the Opposition Front-Bench team.

It is right—this has marginally been touched on—that the first duty of any Government is the protection, safety and security of the public. The state has to manage many measures, sentences and crimes, and collectively we have a duty to ensure that the British public are protected. Alongside robust measures on counter-terrorism and backing our armed forces, we also have amazing intelligence services that form part of the matrix that the Lord Chancellor will now become familiar with, as well as keeping our streets safe by investing in the police and the criminal justice system. Part of that means that the most dangerous, harmful, serious, persistent offenders should be in prison and kept off the streets in order to keep the public safe, and it is important that we have the right deterrent.

Those on the Government Front Bench are clearly making a great deal of play about the role of the previous Government and the decisions made in the last Parliament, but it is telling that one of the first pieces of legislation that this Government are seeking to pass is one that basically considers the early release of 5,500 prisoners in a matter of weeks. I have looked at the impact assessment—the Lord Chancellor will be familiar with it—and I note that it gives option 0 and option 1. I understand the situation that she has been asked to look at, but in her closing remarks I would like to hear what alternatives were considered, other than the blanket scheme.

The Lord Chancellor touched on the previous Parliament, and for the record, in the previous Parliament we saw Labour MPs campaigning to block the removal of foreign national offenders from being deported from our prisons. We saw them oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the tougher sentences that were introduced for sexual and violent offenders— I will come on to the release of some of those offenders shortly. Labour Members opposed life sentences for people smugglers in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which we know is making a difference. The release of 5,500 prisoners, and reducing the time that most offenders stay in custody from 50% of their sentence to 40%, will cause concern for the public, particularly victims of crime.

I would like to ask the Lord Chancellor about some specific areas. She has touched on them, but I would like her to expand on them. In the early release provisions, clear offences such as sexual or domestic abuse offences have been listed in the schedule. She has outlined community orders and tagging, but it is important, particularly for women who have been victims, to know and understand what provisions will be put in place for them. There are also offenders responsible for racially aggravated assaults, and the real harm that comes with offenders with past convictions for sexual offences or perpetrators of domestic abuse, who might be serving time in custody for other offences and who could be freed early.

What we know—the Lord Chancellor will know this—is that those types of perpetrators do not just offend once; they have a whole litany of historical aggravated offences. We cannot simply release those people out into the community, because those blanket offences do cause problems. She is well aware of the cross-party nature of the debate on support for victims over the past decade. I have spoken about a victims Bill, as has she, and it is about how we can work to achieve that.

There will of course be impacts on wider services—this has already been raised, in particular by the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain)—and I would like to ask about the impact on our police, probation and housing services. There is no clear plan in the impact assessment. The Lord Chancellor said in her statement that that will come and that officials are working “at pace”—I have no doubt that Opposition Members will hear a lot of that term from those on the Government Benches. The papers published with this order give no indication of how local authorities, and which local authorities, will be particularly affected by the early release scheme. It is important for local authorities, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in particular, to publish that information with the Ministry of Justice.

The Lord Chancellor has spoken passionately about the transparency she will bring on data releases and numbers, and I urge that we should have that information sooner rather than later. A Labour Member also mentioned homelessness that results from this measure, particularly in the City of London, and we see that already. That is a local authority duty, and statutory duties are in place where we know such things need to be managed. There will be, and already are, pressures on housing stock, and asking the Government to publish a list of local authorities that will be affected is vital. There are also implications for families and individuals on housing registers who will now be worried about the implications for them while they have been waiting patiently on housing lists.

There will be pressures on other parts of the criminal justice system. What resources will we put into the criminal justice system? Will resources be redirected? What about police officers who will now be tied up monitoring offenders on early release, and dealing with those who reoffend? The right hon. Lady has already spoken about reoffending and breaches of conditions that will mean someone going back to prison, but how will that be managed when police officers will be taken away from policing activities? Perhaps I may politely say that clarity is required on such specificity for local authorities and police forces, and our police and crime commissioners will also want to know more about this.

I would like to press the Lord Chancellor on the timings around this decision. It has been touched on already, and the impact assessment states:

“The Lord Chancellor announced her intention for this change to be temporary. This change will be reviewed after 18 months to ensure it is still necessary.”

It would be helpful to be indicative about the concept of the sunset clause—she is familiar with sunset clauses; we have all debated such legislation—and to be clear that this measure will not be permanent. The public, as well as Members of this House, need to be assured on that. Indeed, all Members who are voting today need assurance on that important point.

I wish to ask about the reduction in the prison population by 5,500. The impact assessment considers a period over 10 years, and states:

“The Central scenario assumes there will be 5,500 fewer prison places required than would otherwise be needed in steady state… Over a 10-year period, the average annual savings for HMPPS due to reduced prison running costs are estimated to be £219.5m per annum (2024/25 prices)… Over the ten-year period, there would be a transitional benefit of reducing the additional number of prison places that need to be constructed, with an estimated benefit of”

over £2.2 billion. That is significant money, and will clearly have an impact on the prison building programme.

When the Lord Chancellor made her first speech on prison capacity and the strains, she spoke from the new Five Wells prison in Wellingborough, which was built and delivered under the last Government. It would be useful to hear more about the implications of that £2.2 billion. We heard during the general election that the Government were to continue with the prison building plans and programmes put in place, and change the planning laws, but the impact assessment assumes that there will be a permanent reduction in the prison population of 5,500. I would like to hear more about the modelling of future prison places and numbers. Will there be an expansion of existing prison sites? There were plans for a super prison in Lancashire. Will that be expanded?

Alongside that, we need to understand more about the financial impact of this policy and how the Ministry of Justice, the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility will be scoring this measure in the accounting. The impact assessment suggests a saving of more than £2 billion by reducing the number of prison places to be constructed, as well as more than £200 million a year of savings by reducing the number of offenders in prisons. It is a balancing act, but for clarity, when it comes to law and order, the Government’s direction of travel on keeping our streets safe and the points I have made, we need to know from the Lord Chancellor whether these savings will be banked for the forthcoming fiscal forecast from the Ministry of Justice, the Treasury and the OBR, especially with the Budget and the comprehensive spending review coming in the autumn.

The Government have afforded the House 90 precious minutes to debate the early release of 5,500 prisoners. From where I stand, the prison building programme, just by this impact assessment, looks as if it is being reduced and cut. I am worried that will put the public in grave danger, and it is right that we continue throughout debates—probably post recess, now—to discuss this matter. This is one of the first legislative acts of this Government. It will have implications for public confidence in law and order. I do not need to expand on that; the Lord Chancellor is well-versed in all this. We have to be cognisant of the impact and what this measure means for victims. We should focus on that and the wider functioning of the criminal justice system.

The Lord Chancellor will know that in the previous Parliament, Operation Soteria in particular looked at the integration of policing, the criminal justice system, the court system and the prison system to give confidence to victims of the most abhorrent sexual abuses. Will this proposal have a knock-on impact on some of those key programmes? I would like to have some answers from the Lord Chancellor. Transparency is important, and she has spoken about it in this debate. I have grave concerns, as I know do others on the Opposition Benches, about public safety and security, as well as the wider implications for housing, prisons, probation, the police, law and order, and public safety.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Ghani)]

I call Naz Shah.