Community and Suspended Sentences (Notification of Details) Bill

Ruth Jones Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am delighted to rise to bring this Bill to the House today. It is an important but focused Bill that will amend the 2020 sentencing code to create a duty on offenders to notify the responsible officer of any change of name or contact details if they are sentenced to a community order, a suspended sentence order, a youth rehabilitation order or a referral order.

The Bill will place a new duty on offenders who are serving a sentence in the community and who are being supervised by the probation service or a youth offending team to ensure that any change of name or contact details is notified to the relevant responsible officer. That captures not just any formal legal changes of a name, but the use of an online alias. Offenders will need to notify their responsible officer of any change as soon as is practicable. My Bill will apply to adults and child offenders alike, so that we can create some form of consistency across all offenders who are on licence. Importantly, it will extend to offenders serving community sentences.

In 2022, secondary legislation was passed requiring offenders on licence to inform their probation officer if they changed their name or contact details. The Bill will help to ensure consistency across the sentencing framework and that offenders serving community sentences have their risks managed effectively. For those offenders who are serving community orders, youth rehabilitation orders and referral orders, the requirements contained in the Bill will last for the whole duration of the order while the offender remains supervised by probation or their youth offending team, until it reaches the end date set by the court, or is otherwise terminated. For suspended sentence orders, this requirement will last for the period when the offender must keep in touch with probation. Once the offender is no longer required to keep in touch with probation or the youth offending team, this requirement will also end.

Failure to comply with the duty will be treated the same as failure to comply with the requirement of the order. An offender could be taken back to court. When an order is returned to court, the court can make the requirements of the order more onerous, impose a fine or even sentence the individual to custody. The management of offenders in the community is of the utmost importance to protect people in Newport West and across the United Kingdom and to reduce reoffending.

It is vital that probation and youth offending teams have the information required to be able to effectively manage offenders in the community, and the ability to take swift enforcement action where needed. The Bill will improve the ability of probation and youth offending teams to monitor offenders. It will help to protect the public by ensuring that while an offender is serving a sentence in the community, the responsible officer has the information they need to keep an eye on that individual. As I have noted, that requirement already applies to offenders released from custody, so I believe it is important to ensure that the same requirement applies to offenders serving sentences in our community.

As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on safeguarding in faith communities, I have heard harrowing accounts of offenders who have changed their name—legitimately, at present—by deed poll and then gone on to commit harrowing offences again and again. That is not acceptable.

The people of Newport West elected me to this place in April 2019, and since then, I have sat through many a Friday sitting, listening to detailed and, on occasion, lengthy opening remarks on Second Reading. In the hope of getting this Bill speedily through to the next stage of its journey in this House with support from colleagues on all sides, I will bring my remarks to a close shortly.

In supporting the Bill, this House has an opportunity to improve the ability of probation and youth offending teams to monitor and support offenders in the community as effectively as possible. Most importantly for me, it allows us all to better protect the people who sent us here—the British people. Keeping our people safe, from Newport West to North Down and from Newcastle upon Tyne Central to North Devon, is our most important responsibility as Members of Parliament. With that in mind, I urge colleagues from all parts of the House to give the Bill their full support today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Jones]

With the leave of the House, I rise to close the debate. I thank everybody who has taken part today for the atmosphere of co-operation and consensual politics—it is very different from what happened earlier this week. I start by thanking the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson); I agree with him that the “lock them up” philosophy is not always the way forward, and community sentences are a vital part of our punishment options. I was recently fortunate enough to go to Cardiff Prison with the Welsh Affairs Committee, where we saw for ourselves prisoners who might be in for just seven days. Seven days is not long enough to do anything useful in terms of rehab or breaking the cycle of offending, so the points that the hon. Member made were very important.

I thank the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) for her very important points about female offenders and the distances involved. We do not have a single prison for women in Wales—I am not saying that we should have one but, like her constituents, those women in Wales have a long way to travel. That means women being apart from their families. That is disruptive, and it is very costly to visit. If anyone is in any doubt about female prisoners, they should watch “Time” with Jodie Whittaker; it is a very powerful series.

The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) made an important point about aliases and social media. I am sure we have all had issues with people who have had different names on emails; it is a concern that I share. He also highlighted the importance of staff working in the criminal justice system. I, too, pay tribute to those staff and thank them for all their efforts.

I thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan)—I hope he can put his feet up on the plane to Dublin after this, because he has been very busy today. I also thank the Minister and the team in the Department. The Minister rightly highlighted that the responsibility for reporting a change of details is on the offender; it is very important that we know that. Finally, I thank the Whips, the Public Bill Office and Adam Jogee in my office. This week has seen our Parliament—the mother of Parliaments—at a low point, but I wish the media could be here to see and feel the atmosphere today. I am not a fan of adversarial politics; I believe consensual politics is the way forward. That has been the case today, and I thank the House for it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).