Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Peter Bedford and Shabana Mahmood(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
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.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Peter Bedford and Shabana Mahmood(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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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.