Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bedford Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He draws attention to a deeply disturbing case. I am very happy to meet him and the families concerned.

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

14. What steps she is taking to increase public confidence in the justice system.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

The last Government gave the public plenty of reasons to lose confidence in the justice system, including a rising courts backlog and prisons on the edge of collapse. We have already averted a crisis in our prisons, and have raised Crown court capacity to a 10-year high. We are now embarking on reform of our courts and our prisons. The work of restoring confidence in the justice system has started. It will, of course, take some time.

[Mr Bedford]

Jason Hoganson was wrongly released under the Government’s early release scheme. Last week, he was convicted of assaulting his ex-partner just a day after he was freed under that botched scheme. Does the Secretary of State agree that this shocking case, and cases like it, continue to undermine the public’s trust and confidence in our justice system?

[Shabana Mahmood]

What undermines confidence in the justice system is running out of prison places, which is the inheritance the Conservative Government left for this Government. That is the mess that we are cleaning up. The hon. Gentleman will also be aware that the previous Government’s end-of-custody supervised licence scheme was also an early release scheme, but without any of the measures on accountability and transparency, or the wider set of exclusions, that that we introduced with the SDS40 scheme.