Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bedford Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. What Engineered Learning is doing is a clear win-win, teaching welding skills and moving people away from crime. The Department will continue funding youth offending teams to work with local education and employment providers to help young people get the skills they need to have productive careers and positive lives.

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

Aspiration and ambition are drivers of social mobility and help to reduce deprivation and crime. What discussions has the Minister had with the Department for Education to increase apprenticeships and training, so that these opportunities can be extended to all and we can reduce young offending throughout the UK?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

We have regular discussions with the Department for Education on these matters. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the more young people we get into training, education and work, the less crime we should have on our streets.

Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Peter Bedford Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

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

What the Sentencing Council ludicrously proposed was nothing short of two-tier justice: guidelines which would mean that young black, Asian or indeed other non-white offenders could receive more lenient sentences than their white counterparts in exactly the same circumstances. Let me be clear: justice must be equality before the law. As someone once said,

“justice should not only be done, but…be seen to be done”.

It should not depend on your race, the colour of your skin, your culture or your religion. It is high time we reminded the unelected, unaccountable, and quite frankly woke quangos that equality means treating everyone the same, and not creating one rule for some and one rule for others.

I am therefore glad that we have finally reached the Second Reading of a Bill that will stop the madness espoused by this out-of-touch, “liberal dinner party set” advisory body. For far too long, bodies such as the Sentencing Council have been allowed to rule the roost. Quangos of this kind—unserious and wasteful organisations —are costing the taxpayer more than £64 billion a year. Parliament must be sovereign, and should not continue to come up against a brick wall of regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles.

I cannot help having a sense of déjà vu. I was sitting in this very place well over a month ago when my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), the shadow Lord Chancellor, introduced legislation that would have prevented this slide into two-tier justice—and all the while, the Lord Chancellor allowed the chairman of the Sentencing Council to effectively run rings around her, the Government and the will of the House. Let us stop pretending: sadly, two-tier justice does exist, and the British people know it. Let us look at the facts. People are being thrown into jail for making stupid comments online, while grooming gangs were able to operate unchallenged because of a fear of cultural sensitivities. This is wrong, and the British people demand that it end now. However, it is not happening just in the courts. Police forces in the UK have been caught blocking white applicants from jobs, and that was based not on ability but purely on the colour of their skin.

How on earth did we get here? This is the country of the Magna Carta, the birthplace of common law and some of the greatest legal minds that the world has ever seen, yet we have enabled an unelected quango to propose guidelines that are openly discriminatory, and equality before the law has been replaced by ideology over fairness.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Peter Bedford Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

The Government do not believe that there should be differential treatment before the law. The Lord Chancellor has been very clear about that. The “Equal Treatment Bench Book”, to which the hon. Member alludes, is written by and for the judges. Ministers have no involvement whatsoever in its content.

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

Does the Minister agree with me and many of my hon. Friends that policy decisions by unelected non-departmental bodies such as the Sentencing Council are eroding public confidence in our democratic institutions? Will he commit to scrapping such bodies, so that policy is always made by Ministers, who are directly accountable to this House?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

Policy decisions should always be made by this House; the hon. Member is absolutely correct about that. The background to where we are today is that the Sentencing Council consulted the Government of the day, members of whom are now on the Opposition Benches. The members of that Government were asleep at the wheel. Now it is down to this Government, yet again, to pick up the pieces they left for us and sort out their mess.

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.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Peter Bedford Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

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

This is a humbling subject to speak about. I put on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) for bringing this important issue before the House.

I have witnessed at first hand the cruelty that a terminal diagnosis brings. As the son of a single mother, my grandparents were like second parents to me. Each struggled with their own incurable cancer diagnosis. At Christmas dinner in 2019, my nan, who could no longer eat and was clearly in a great deal of pain, turned to me and said she was “ready to go”. “It’s time now,” she added. That night, I reflected on how, as a society, we shy away from discussing death. We park it away and prioritise more immediate, palatable subjects, but it impacts members of our communities day in, day out— from terminal diagnoses to medical treatment and, ultimately, their final days. This really matters to me.

In my maiden speech, I pledged to campaign for people to have greater control in their final days and to afford those with terminal diagnoses the right to end their lives in dignity. This is not an argument against palliative care—some wonderful Macmillan nurses made my nan’s final months as comfortable as possible, and I absolutely agree with the many Members who have raised the issue today that we need to do more to support our palliative care sector—but good palliative care and a dignified end of life are not mutually exclusive.

Nor do I seek to control those who have strong religious beliefs. Those who believe that only God can take life have the complete freedom to wait for that moment. But that is their choice. [Interruption.] I am not taking any interventions. Many have legitimate concerns about safeguarding. Of course, the most vulnerable should not be coerced into making a decision. However, this Bill introduces specific offences for this. Indeed, combined with sign-off by two independent doctors, judicial oversight and a period of reflection, this means there would be robust mechanisms to protect the most vulnerable.

[Neil O’Brien]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Bedford]

I am not giving way.

These details are vital, but so is our humanity. Being with my nan in the warmth of her home, as she was surrounded by her loving family after months of excruciating pain and no hope, I knew there and then that she should be able to choose her time to say goodbye to her family. Like so many others, she had had enough. An understanding and compassionate society should not stand in the way of her right to choose.

Members can see the profound impact this has had on me and my belief in the importance of end of life care and choice. It has enabled me to understand a crucial distinction at the heart of this emotive debate. This is not about shortening life; it is about shortening death.

I urge those Members who support the principle of this Bill, but who are concerned about the specifics of the safeguards, to support it on Second Reading. Further debate can be had in Committee, if hon. Members feel that changes are required. This Bill provides the choice to shorten death, which is a right that an empathetic and considerate society should afford its citizens.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bedford Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am very sorry to hear about the circumstances facing my hon. Friend’s constituent’s sibling in prison. We are determined to make more progress with IPP prisoners, but never in a way that compromises public protection. If my hon. Friend writes to the Department with the specifics of the case, I will ensure that he receives a response.

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

A lady from Northampton was recently given a 31-month sentence for a tweet, whereas an individual who incited physical violence on the streets of Birmingham as part of a pro-Palestinian protest received a far lesser sentence. Does the Secretary of State agree that such inconsistencies create the perception, at least, that we have a two-tier justice system?

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is incumbent on Members to ensure that such a perception does not take hold and not to inappropriately compare sentences handed out in different types of cases. As the hon. Gentleman well knows and every Member of this House should know, sentences in individual cases are a matter for the independent judges who hear those cases; the trials unfold in front of them.