Criminal Law

Debate between Priti Patel and Shabana Mahmood

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

With the leave of the House, I will respond to the debate, but let me begin by saying what a pleasure it has been to do my first piece of legislation in this House under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker. You are a fellow Small Heathan Brummie, and it is no doubt a great first for the community from which we both come.

I was astonished by the shadow Minister’s remarks. He said that he was deeply troubled by the measure, but he and his party, who formed the previous Government, were not troubled enough to prevent the crisis from occurring in the first place. He knows full well that they have left no other option on the table but that which we are taking, and anyone with access to a newspaper can tell that, until about three weeks ago, this was their own plan. I am afraid to say that that is the modern-day Tory party: opportunistic, cynical and unfit to govern.

The shadow Minister asked a number of questions, most of which I had addressed in my opening remarks. Let me remind him—he should know—that our prisons are at over 99% capacity. The exact number will fluctuate on a daily basis, but everyone who works in criminal justice knows that our prisons will overflow by September unless we pass this measure.

On the sunset clause and exclusions for domestic violence-linked offences, I will take no lessons from the Tory party. It brought forward the end-of-custody supervised licence scheme, and that had no exclusions for domestic abuse. I raised that issue many times when I was sitting on the Opposition Benches, and the then Tory Government simply stonewalled and did not give any answers whatsoever. I am pleased to see that Opposition Members have finally discovered that we should treat victims of domestic abuse differently from how we have previously, but they should have applied that to the measure that was their Government’s policy until just three weeks ago.

I will also take no lessons from the Tory party on the sunset clause. I remind them that the end-of-custody supervised licence scheme not only did not have a sunset clause but was in fact extended by the previous Tory Government from 18 days to 35 days and then to 60 days. We then had the ignominy of the increase to 70 days that came without any announcement whatsoever. So when I say that the Government will be different from the last one, I mean it. We have already been far more transparent than the previous Government ever were or could have dreamed of being, and that is the vein in which we will continue.

I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) raised reoffending, which was also brought up by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), as well. It is critical that we get the rates of reoffending down.

Let me turn to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). I am slightly perturbed that I found myself in agreement with his first point—I agree that prisons are about punishment—but when 80% of offenders are reoffenders, something is going horribly wrong within our prisons. Every time we have somebody coming out of our prison estate who is a better criminal than they were when they went in, that creates more victims, and we are letting our public down if we do not get the rates of reoffending down. Cutting reoffending is a strategy for putting victims first and cutting crime as much as it is about helping those prisoners become better citizens. I hope that he will take my comments in the spirit in which they are intended, which is a good-faith response to his remarks, and reflect on the necessity of the country finally getting its shocking rates of reoffending down and putting the public first.

I return to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green. IPP prisoners are not included within this measure. I know that he and others in the House have supported the possibility of a resentencing exercise, which we did not support in opposition. That is not the Government’s policy, because while I do want to make progress on IPP prisoners, we cannot take any steps that would put public protection at risk. It is a delicate balancing act, but we will start with the measures passed by the previous Government in the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 on the changes to the licence period and the action plan, which we will publish as soon as possible. Where possible, I want to make progress where IPP prisoners are concerned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) made a really important point on the costs. There is a cost to the action that we are taking today, but there would be a much bigger cost to inaction. If we fail to take this measure today, we will face the total collapse of the criminal justice system. That catastrophic disaster has to be averted at all costs.

Let me turn to the comments of the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel). I am pleased about how she has approached the debate. Let me assure her, particularly on matters of national security such as they touch on my responsibilities as Lord Chancellor, that we will always take a cross-party approach and look to work together in the national interest.

The right hon. Lady raised important points about the join-up between different service providers, whether that is police, local authorities or others. I have already chaired a criminal justice board and we already have an implementation taskforce that will work over the summer to ensure that all the different agencies are working together so that the roll-out in September is successful. My Ministers will be working with Ministers in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that join-up occurs. That is an important point, and I will be taking a close personal interest in the implementation.

[Priti Patel]

Could the Lord Chancellor expand—probably not in this debate but over the summer or even in September —on the local authorities? The point about prison building will not go away. I believe that we need more prisons, we should be building more prisons, and that should come forward from the previous prison programme. There is the issue about finances—the £2.2 billion that I referred to—but will she commit to publishing a list of the local authorities she is proactively working with, which may be those from the previous prison building programme, where we will see more prisons?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I will happily return or write to the right hon. Lady in respect of specific local authorities. The impact of prison capacity is uneven, but it is also in flux on a daily basis. On money and the long-term supply of prison places, we will be publishing a 10-year prison capacity strategy, which will deal with the long-term plans that our Government have to increase supply of prison places.