Probation Service: Prioritisation
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
The Probation Service is an essential part of our criminal justice system. Keeping our streets safe and cutting crime depends upon the vital work of probation officers and staff. Today, it supervises just over a quarter of a million offenders, from those on community sentences to those released from custody. That is not all. The Probation Service provides sentencing advice to judges and magistrates every day in our courts, oversees more than 4 million hours of community payback each year, monitors 9,000 offenders on tags at any given moment, provides a vital link to thousands of victims, through the victims contact and the victims notification schemes and works in close partnership with policing and the voluntary sector to keep our communities safe.
The pressure facing our Probation Service is considerable and I am grateful for everyone who works tirelessly across the system. It is only right to acknowledge the incredibly hard, and often hidden, work that probation officers do across England and Wales. These dedicated staff have been the single constant throughout the last decade of change. We need to ensure that the Probation Service can deliver the vital work that needs to be done to keep the public safe and reduce reoffending. However, the Probation Service this Government inherited was burdened with a workload that was, quite simply, impossible. We need to be honest and open about the state that the Probation Service was left in by the previous Government. The transforming rehabilitation strategy failed. The rhetoric was of a revolution in how we manage offenders, but the reality was far different. Workloads increased, as new offenders were brought under supervision for the first time, and scarce resources were stretched further than ever. We know that morale plummeted, and worrying numbers of staff voted with their feet, leaving the service altogether, leading the then inspector to declare a “national shortage” of probation professionals.
The new structures failed. The privately owned community rehabilitation companies set up to manage medium and low-risk offenders underperformed, and between 2017 and 2018, just five of 37 CRC audits carried out by HMPPS demonstrated that expected standards were being met. In 2019, eight out of the 10 CRCs inspected that year received the lowest possible rating—“inadequate”—for supervising offenders. The chief inspector of probation called them “irredeemably flawed”. The previous Administration reunified the Probation Service but wasted a decade and millions of pounds.
When we took office, we discovered that orders handed out by courts were not taking place. In the three years to March 2024, around 13,000 accredited programmes, a type of rehabilitative course, did not happen. This was not because an offender had failed to do what was expected of them, but instead because the Probation Service had been unable to deliver these courses in the required timeframe.
For that reason, I have asked the Probation Service to put in place a process of prioritisation. Accredited programmes handed down by the courts to those who are considered to have the higher risk of reoffending will be prioritised. This is not a decision I take lightly. But it is a decision to confront the reality of the challenges facing the Probation Service. Those who will not complete an accredited course will remain under the supervision of a probation officer. And all the requirements placed upon them will remain in place. Any breach of a community sentence could see them hauled back into court, and any breach of a licence condition could see them back behind bars.
In July, I committed to bringing on 1,000 trainee probation officers by March of this year—a commitment that we are making progress towards. Next financial year, we will onboard at least another 1,300. New probation officers are the lifeblood of the service, and they will guarantee its future. And I want to ensure that we are taking advantage of the latest technology, like AI. We must give probation staff access to modern digital services, drawing in data from across the justice system. Work is already ongoing that is improving the flow of information that is so critical to an accurate assessment of an offender’s risk, and new tools are beginning to strip away the administrative burden that gets between a probation officer and an offender.
However, given the challenges faced by the Probation Service, new staff and better processes are not sufficient on their own. Faced by a caseload of just over a quarter of a million we need to think about how we use the Probation Service most effectively. If the service is to fulfil its historic purpose—protecting the public by reducing reoffending—we need to look hard at what works, and where officers time is best spent. When it comes to the value of a probation officer’s time the evidence is clear that we must shift more of probation officers’ time towards the higher-risk offenders, spending more time on protecting the public, working with partners, and working with the offender to rehabilitate them and motivate them to change.
This Government will focus the Probation Service on the interventions that have the greatest impact. For lower-risk offenders, we will task probation officers with a swifter intervention. They will spend more time with an offender immediately after their sentencing or release from prison to assess the root causes of an offender’s crime. Then they will refer them to the services that will address that behaviour, which could be education, training, drug treatment or accommodation. Once they are following that direction, as long as the offender stays on the straight and narrow, we must then focus probation officer’s time more effectively. This means more time spent with the offenders who pose the higher risk of harm or reoffending and more time with offenders whose prolific offending causes so much social and economic damage to local communities.
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Oral Answers to Questions
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
The last Government left us with a record and rising backlog. Cases are taking years to be heard, and the number of victims dropping out at police stage has nearly doubled. We have taken steps to deliver swifter justice by increasing sitting days to a 10-year high and extending magistrates courts’ sentencing powers, but we must go further. That is why I have commissioned Sir Brian Leveson to conduct a review of the courts, asking him to propose once-in-a-generation reform.
Mr Mohindra
We all want justice to be served as quickly as possible, and many of my constituents have contacted me recently with concerns about law and order. Given the various media reports about unused capacity in courts up and down the country, what is the Secretary of State’s Department doing to ensure that every aspect of the justice system is working efficiently and at full capacity?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I share his concerns and those of his constituents—indeed, I see many such cases in my own constituency advice surgeries. We are working at pace to ensure that every bit of the criminal justice system is working at its maximum efficient capacity. That includes everything from police stage right through to sentencing in the courts. I am sure that he will be aware of the very strained situation we inherited. It will take some time for those changes to take effect, but we are driving forward system efficiency, and Sir Brian Leveson’s review will give us a policy package with which to reform the system for the benefit of all victims.
Bradley Thomas
Constituents across Bromsgrove and the villages are sick and tired of violent criminality and lawlessness creeping over the border from Birmingham into our constituency. In the past year, Romsley Co-op and Wythall post office at Drakes Cross—both of which are on the northern fringe of my constituency—have been raided, and it is hard to believe that proximity to Birmingham is not a factor in that. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that prosecutions are pursued and custodial sentences are given in the first instance, to crack down on crime and make our area safe again?
Shabana Mahmood
Through our landmark review of sentencing, this Government are ensuring that sentencing is fit for purpose. That will ultimately put us in a position where we can crack down on reoffending, thereby cutting crime and the number of victims. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is proposing carving out his part of the world from any other part of the country, but his argument about boundaries can apply to any part of the UK. That is why we need a functioning justice system for the whole of England and Wales, and that is what this Government are going to deliver.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
The Justice Secretary has said that she agrees with the old legal maxim that justice delayed is justice denied. We currently have a record backlog of 73,000 in the Crown courts; rape cases are not being prosecuted for three or four years; and, in particular, on any one day 25% of cases do not take place, for a variety of reasons. What is the Justice Secretary doing to speed up the whole system?
Shabana Mahmood
I agree with the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee that the backlog is far too high. He will know that, no matter what we do in terms of system efficiency and capacity, that backlog is projected to rise, because the demand coming into the system is particularly high and is itself rising. That is why I have asked Sir Brian Leveson to consider once-in-a-generation policy reform, so that we can make the legislative changes necessary to bring the backlog down. That is the change that is required, alongside system-wide efficiency and productivity.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has announced two major reviews of the criminal justice system—the Leveson review and the Gauke review—and has said that, very impressively, they might report by the spring, which could be 1 March. There is a difference between reporting and taking action, so could she set out exactly when she expects the results of those two reviews to have a direct impact on case numbers?
Shabana Mahmood
The Chair of the Justice Committee is tempting me to pre-empt what the reviews will find. Those findings will, of course, dictate the pace at which change can then occur. He will be aware of the acute pressure on our prisons system, despite the emergency levers that I have had to pull—that has only bought us some time, as I have said when regularly updating the House. The sentencing review measures have to take account of our remaining problem with prison capacity. Once the review has been published, we will move quickly to decide which recommendations to take forward. On the courts package, it is likely that any measures will also require legislative reform. Again, I will seek to move at pace on that, but that rather depends on the package of measures that Sir Brian Leveson ultimately recommends.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
The courts backlog is growing by 500 cases every month, and the Ministry of Justice has not set a date for when it will come down. Victims are being forced to put their lives on hold while they wait for a trial date, yet today at the Old Bailey half of all the courtrooms sit empty. The Lady Chief Justice has said that there are 4,000 additional sitting days available that could be used now. Who is the obstacle to resolving this? Is it the Justice Secretary, who is content for rape trials to be scheduled for as far off as 2027, or is it the Chancellor, and the Justice Secretary has just had rings run around her by the Treasury?
Shabana Mahmood
What an absolutely outrageous set of remarks! The right hon. Member completely forgets that, only six months ago, his Government were in charge. The Government of which he was part all but ran our justice system into the ground. I do not recall seeing him standing up and speaking about delays for rape victims, or indeed any other kind of victim, when he was on this side of the House. I am glad he has now realised that the system ought to try to put victims first. His critique would have more force were it not for the fact that this Government, having come to office only six months ago, have increased Crown court sitting capacity by 2,500 days.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
I am sure that the whole House will join me in saying that our thoughts today are with the victims of these horrific crimes and their families. Last week we saw a measure of justice done, but over a number of years there was widespread state failure that meant that this attacker was not stopped. It is right that there will be an inquiry. The Ministry of Justice will play its full part, and I will ensure that any lessons for us are learned.
Liz Twist
When the tragedy of Southport happened, crucial details about the case could not be revealed to ensure that the trial did not collapse and the vile perpetrator did not walk away as a free man. However, some on social media were playing by different rules. Does the Secretary of State think that our contempt rules are fit for the modern world?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend raises an important point. The Government would not say anything that would risk collapsing this trial. The media followed the law, and so did everyone in this House, but the same was not true online. As the Prime Minister has said, this challenge clearly must be addressed. The Law Commission is reviewing contempt laws. We will look closely at that work and consider these issues in the round.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
But the information released shortly before the trial did not collapse the case. Had it been released in August, it might have had a dampening effect on those unhelpful voices on social media, might it not?
Shabana Mahmood
As I said in my previous answer, it is clear that the fast pace of the online world has some significant challenges for our present arrangements around contempt laws. The Government’s approach, which was to do nothing that might risk collapsing the trial, was the right one. I hope that will have support across the House. It would have been in no one’s interests to take any risks with the safety of the trial. As I have said, the online space poses some challenges for our contempt law arrangements, and the Law Commission is rightly looking into that.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Contempt of court laws are guardrails that ensure fair trials. Does the Justice Secretary accept that, as the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said, by failing to provide basic information to the public that has been disclosed in previous cases—information that would not prejudice a trial—the authorities created a vacuum in which misinformation spread? That misinformation could itself have been prejudicial to the trial. Does she agree that in an age when most people consume their news through social media, saying nothing is not cost-free? Will she commit to reviewing this issue now, rather than waiting for the Law Commission?
Shabana Mahmood
There will always be differing views among lawyers about what can and cannot be said. It is right that the Government took their own position and that we did nothing that could risk collapsing the trial. I agree with the shadow Secretary of State that the online world poses a significant challenge to our contempt laws. That is why that is already being looked at. As there is a piece of work already under way, I do not want to pre-empt where that could land. The Law Commission has a good track record of considering major law changes. Because of the inquiry and the fast-moving nature of these things, I will keep this area under close review myself.
Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
By failing to attend their sentencing hearings, criminals add insult to injury and deny victims and their families a vital part of seeing justice done. Iusb will be legislating to give judges the power to order attendance at sentencing hearings, and I will make it clear in the law that reasonable force can be used to make sure that happens. The Prime Minister and I met Cheryl Korbel last week to discuss these proposals, and we will ensure that the families of other victims are involved before the Bill is put before the House.
Anneliese Midgley
I thank the Secretary of State for that positive response, and I thank her and the Prime Minister for meeting me and my constituent Cheryl Korbel, the mother of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, the nine-year-old who was tragically murdered in 2022. Cheryl is pleased that the Government have committed to implementing Olivia’s law without delay. Can the Minister ensure that Cheryl is involved in the development of this law, placing victims and their families at the heart of the justice system?
Shabana Mahmood
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work she is doing on behalf of her constituents. I was pleased to be able to discuss these matters with her. She is absolutely right, and it is crucial that we make progress in this area. We have committed to introducing that legislation before the summer, and I will, as I promised last week, consult Olivia’s family and the families of other victims for whom non-attendance at sentencing hearings has caused problems.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
There are a small number of people who, through due process, appear in court and are convicted, but who decline to come up to the court room for sentencing. The Secretary of State has indicated her intention to move on this. Does she agree that the Government need to show a very robust approach, so that people who show disdain and contempt for the rule of law are shown that there is no room for manoeuvre and that they must and will appear in court?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Member is right. It is already expected that defendants will attend sentencing hearings, but we know that some take the opportunity not to face the families of their victims, which causes huge trauma to some of the families. We will clarify and put on a statutory footing the expectation of attendance at sentencing hearings, along with sanctions for dealing with offenders who still, despite being compelled to attend court—even through the use of reasonable force—seek to disrupt hearings.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
The Government have inherited a situation where 10% of offenders account for 50% of all offences. We have also inherited an epidemic of shoplifting, the kind of antisocial crime that blights communities. I have commissioned David Gauke to review how sentences could be reformed to address prolific offending, reduce reoffending, cut crime and ultimately make our streets safer.
Mr Holden
I believe in second chances, and perhaps even more chances in some cases, but the excellent Policy Exchange report, “The ‘Wicked and the Redeemable’: A Long-Term Plan to Fix a Criminal Justice System in Crisis” found that hyper-prolific offenders—those with more than 45 previous convictions—are sent to prison on fewer than half of the occasions on which they are convicted of a subsequent indictable or either-way offence. Given that those people commit such high numbers of crimes, which usually affect our least affluent constituents, what consideration have the Government given to the report’s recommendations, particularly on introducing a mandatory two-year sentence for hyper-prolific offenders who are convicted of a subsequent indictable or either-way offence?
Shabana Mahmood
The right hon. Member raises an important point about an issue that blights communities across the country. I agree that we need a specific strategy for dealing with prolific offenders. Of course, different organisations use different definitions of what counts as a prolific offender or hyper-prolific offender, and that is why I have asked David Gauke to look specifically at this cohort of offenders in the independent sentencing review. The revolving door of prison and other types of sentences for them is clearly not having an impact. We must think about the interventions that will make the biggest difference to the largest number of those offenders, so that we can cut crime and have fewer victims.
Katie Lam
The Lord Chancellor rightly says that less than 10% of criminals account for nearly half of crime. I understand that a sentencing review is under way, but any decisions are for Ministers to make. Will the right hon. Lady please rule out here and now any possibility of allowing career criminals to avoid prison, even for short sentences?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Member will know that I am not going to pre-empt any of the findings of the sentencing review. The point of having an independent review is to allow for a look at all the issues in the round. I have made it clear that I am particularly concerned about the people who she rightly terms career criminals, and I am particularly keen to think about the interventions that could make the biggest difference, so that we can reduce this blight on our communities. That is a clear statement of intent from the Government, showing how seriously we take prolific offending, but the measures that we choose to take forward will be clearer once the sentencing review has reported.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
As the Secretary of State mentioned, the approach to managing hyper-prolific offenders is part of David Gauke’s review, which could consider, for example, the wider use of GPS tagging and home curfew, but the Department has been undertaking its own assessment of the effectiveness of GPS tagging. Will the Government commit to publishing that review before or alongside the sentencing review, so that we can properly judge the merits of any proposed expansion?
Shabana Mahmood
As I have sought to do throughout this process, I will ensure transparency in the Government’s approach when it comes to not just the emergency releases data, but other information that underpins future policy choices.
Dr Mullan
I did not quite hear a “yes”, but I will take that as an encouraging commitment that the Secretary of State will publish the GPS tagging review ahead of any sentencing review. However, I am afraid that in Ministers’ discussions of these issues, they risk losing sight of the fact that imprisonment also serves the important purpose of punishing offenders in the interests of justice. Importantly, how will the Government decide whether any of David Gauke’s proposals that they are minded to accept sufficiently punish offenders? How will that judgment be made before any recommendations are accepted?
Shabana Mahmood
I have said on many occasions in this House that I believe in punishment and in prison. Prison has a core role to play in the punishment of offenders. However, we must not run out of prison places. We must balance the need to punish and imprison people with interventions that expand the use of punishment outside prison. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says, “Build more” from a sedentary position. We are. We are moving forward to solve the 14,000 prison place deficit left by his Government at the last election. This Government will build prisons, but as he knows, we cannot build our way out of the prison capacity crisis. We must consider other measures as well, but let me be clear: we will always seek to punish offenders, and prison will always have a place. This Government will build more prison places than the previous one.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
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.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
On Friday, I met my constituent Hayley Johns. She has given me permission to share her story in this place. Hayley was a victim of domestic abuse and actual bodily harm perpetrated by an ex-partner. I was absolutely shocked to hear her story. Her ex-partner was convicted for three years for his crimes. However, he is being considered for release after serving just three months. Does the Justice Secretary agree that given the legacy of the previous Government, we need to redouble our efforts, and the efforts of this Government, to improve confidence in the criminal justice system? Can I please ask her to take a personal interest in this case?
Shabana Mahmood
I will happily look at the facts of the case. Some of those numbers do not sound like they should be possible, but that could be down to specific factors relating to that case. If my hon. Friend writes to me with the details, I will make sure he has a full response.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
Confidence in the criminal justice system can be achieved only if support for victims and survivors is adequately funded, but charities such as Victim Support, whose services I have personally benefited from, have said that for them, the hike in employers’ national insurance contributions amounts to a real-terms budget cut of 7%. Victims need more support, not less. Will the Secretary of State fight to reverse that damaging cut and help restore victims’ confidence in the criminal justice system?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the difficult fiscal inheritance for this Government, and that we have had to make some difficult choices. We received a good settlement from the Treasury at the last Budget, but it is not without its challenges, given the high demand in our system. He will know that we have protected funding for victims of violence against women and girls, including rape and sexual offences. We have sought to protect the most vulnerable victims when making decisions on our victims funding packages.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
The right hon. Member raises a very important point on these heinous gangs and the crimes that they commit. The 20 recommendations made by Alexis Jay in her independent inquiry on child sexual abuse were ignored for far too long. The Government are working at pace to respond to them. We will also legislate to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, ensuring that the punishment fits these horrific crimes.
Sir John Hayes
As in Bradford last week, where more of the grooming gangsters, largely of Pakistani origin, who raped white girls there and elsewhere were sentenced, the paucity of the Home Secretary’s audit, whereby authorities mark their own homework, was made clear. Will the Justice Secretary agree to a wide-ranging review of these matters with statutory powers? Surely those whose lives have been ruined, and those whose lives may yet be ruined, deserve more than the weak reticence of people with power who refuse to face the facts.
Shabana Mahmood
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and I have a shared objective in making it clear that there is a desire in all parts of the House to ensure that we face the full facts and that the victims of these heinous crimes receive the justice they deserve. I am sorry to hear that there are concerns in Bradford about the audit ordered by the Home Secretary; I will ensure that they are passed on to the Home Secretary, because, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, these matters fall directly within the purview of the Home Department.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
This Government inherited a record and rising Crown court backlog and prisons on the point of collapse, serving as breeding grounds for crime that create better criminals, not better citizens. The work of restoring safer streets in this country will be long and hard, but we are taking immediate action. Since the last Justice orals, we have increased the number of sitting days in the Crown court by 2,000 this financial year and boosted criminal legal aid by up to £92 million a year to get cases moving through the courts more quickly. We have published a 10-year prison capacity strategy, setting out plans to build 14,000 new prison places to ensure we always have the space to lock up dangerous criminals. We launched the Women’s Justice Board, with one clear goal: to send fewer women to prison. We are doing what it takes to deliver swifter justice for victims and punishment that cuts crime.
Charlotte Cane
Ministers have talked quite a bit today about expanded powers for magistrates courts. Could the Secretary of State tell me what additional funding is being made available and what training there will be for magistrates to assist them with this expanded role?
Shabana Mahmood
The changes in relation to magistrates court sentencing powers were made by the previous Government due to prison capacity issues, and they were working well. We have restored those same powers, so I do not think those issues around training are necessarily engaged. However, we will ensure that legal advisers and the full package of measures that magistrates need to fulfil their obligations are in place.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Two weeks ago, three grooming gang members were sentenced at Bradford Crown court for the most appalling rapes of children, but they received only six, seven and nine-year sentences respectively—six years, out on licence in four, for the rape of a child. Does the Secretary of State agree that those sentences are disgracefully short, and will she commit to using the sentencing review to mandate full life sentences for these evil people? If she will, she will have our support.
Shabana Mahmood
We have a shared objective in making sure that these evil individuals feel the full force of the law. I will not comment on individual sentencing decisions, and the shadow Lord Chancellor might wish to reflect on that decision; it is not appropriate to do so, given our collective commitment to the independence of the judiciary. However, as I said in response to earlier questions, we will legislate to make grooming an aggravating factor, and this Government will make sure that victims get the justice they deserve.
Robert Jenrick
I have written to the Attorney General asking him to review those sentences as potentially unduly lenient. Two of the men who were sentenced at Bradford Crown court for grooming gang offences were absent. They are thought to have absconded abroad. Can the Justice Secretary confirm how many grooming gang defendants the Government are currently pursuing overseas and what efforts are being made by the Government with, in this case, the Pakistani authorities, using every lever of the British state to locate these evil men and get justice for the victims?
Shabana Mahmood
I will happily write to the right hon. Gentleman with details on the specific case that he raises. He is right to say that we have international agreements and arrangements with other jurisdictions to ensure that offenders can be brought back to face justice in this country. I am sure that those arrangements are being applied appropriately, but I will make sure that he gets a fuller answer on the case that he has raised.
Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
Shabana Mahmood
I agree that we need to do everything we can to remove foreign national offenders from our prisons. Between 5 July 2024 and 4 January 2025, 2,580 foreign national offenders were returned—a 23% increase on the same period in the previous year—and we are currently on track to remove more foreign national offenders this year than at any time in recent years.
Andrew Cooper (Mid Cheshire) (Lab)
Humanist marriage has been legal in Scotland for 20 years but continues to wait to be legalised in England and Wales. The Law Commission made recommendations two years ago on clarifying the law, but when asked to set out a timetable for action, the Minister in the other place could only respond, “in the fullness of time.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 December 2024; Vol. 841, c. 910.]
Can the Minister set out the timetable or, alternatively, say when the Government will make an order to end the long wait for humanist marriage?
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Lady should know there are robust processes in place in government to manage conflict of interest, which were in place under the previous Administration as well, but this is not something that any Government Minister will be giving a running commentary on.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. We believe that much more can be achieved through the increased use of AI and other digital technology to speed up some of the paper processes that create delays across the criminal justice system. As chair of the Criminal Justice Board, I have asked for a cross-system criminal justice response on this and I will update the House in due course.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
No doubt we all agree that preventable deaths should be prevented, and tragedies like Hillsborough and Grenfell must not be repeated because we fail to make changes, so what consideration has the Secretary of State given to creating a national oversight mechanism to ensure that lessons are learned from every state-related death?
Shabana Mahmood
The Government will shortly be publishing the Bill that campaigners refer to as the Hillsborough law, which will reflect issues relating to the duty of candour, which this Government are committed to, and I know that campaigners are making representations to the Home Office on the national oversight mechanism that it is currently considering.
David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)
Can the Secretary of State explain to the House in what circumstances the police and the Crown Prosecution Service are allowed to deny access to evidence, after a trial has concluded, to a defence lawyer who is seeking to appeal, as has happened in the Lucy Letby case and, I believe, in others?
Shabana Mahmood
The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that, as Justice Secretary, I am not able to interfere in any independent decisions made by the police or the Crown Prosecution Service, but he has made his point and I will ensure that it is dealt with by the appropriate individuals—either the Home Secretary or the head of the CPS.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
There are serious questions about the transparency of the police, the CPS and the Government in the days and weeks following the Southport attack. In written answers to me, the Government have refused to provide the dates when the Prime Minister was told that Rudakubana possessed ricin and an al-Qaeda training manual. Can the Justice Secretary tell me why?
Shabana Mahmood
The Prime Minister has responded to the other questions that have been raised. The appropriate information was made available at the appropriate time to either the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary. It was right that the Government did not give any commentary that could have collapsed the trial. On the specific charge relating to ricin, that decision required Law Officer approval, which was sought and immediately given.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
I know that the Justice Secretary is aware of the tragic case of my constituent Sara Sharif. Will she consider reforming family courts and ending the presumption in favour of parental contact despite the fact that there were safeguarding concerns?
Criminal Courts: Independent Review
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
This Government inherited a justice system in crisis with huge delays to hearings and victims left in limbo waiting to see justice done. We are committed to reducing the outstanding caseload in the Crown court and ensuring justice is delivered.
The first thing we had to do was understand the scale of the problem facing us. When this Government took up office in July, errors in His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service data meant there was no published data for the Crown court caseload. I asked the Department to commission an external auditor to look into the data so we could be certain of the scale of the challenge ahead of us in tackling the Crown court backlog.
Following this independent assurance review, we can now confirm that the open caseload in the Crown court has risen to around 73,000, up from 38,000 cases in December 2019. This means victims are waiting far too long to see justice, with some trials now being listed for 2028.
The data published today has been through an intensive series of reviews and validation to ensure it reflects the reality seen at the courts. However, these statistics show the scale of the challenge and now we must continue to bear down on the backlog to deliver swifter justice for victims. Since July, we have begun that work.
We first increased the number of Crown court sitting days this financial year to 106,500, a higher allocation than in six of the last seven years. We then expanded magistrates court sentencing powers so they can hand down custodial sentences of up to 12 months for a single triable either way offence. This frees up the equivalent of 2,000 sitting days per year in the Crown court so judges can focus on the most serious cases.
Meanwhile, we are continuing to use 16 Nightingale courtrooms across seven venues to hear more cases up and down the country and are recruiting approximately 1,000 judges and tribunal members annually across all jurisdictions.
But we must also be honest. The scale of this challenge is greater than these measures alone can achieve. Even if our courts sat at their maximum possible capacity, we could not stop the backlog from increasing, let alone bring it down.
If victims are going to see justice done more swiftly in this country, we cannot simply do more of the same. We need to do things differently.
That is why today, with the agreement of the Lady Chief Justice, I have asked Sir Brian Leveson to undertake a review of our criminal courts to consider how we can speed up the hearing of cases, and I am grateful for his support with this.
The review will have two goals:
First, to consider how the criminal courts could be reformed to ensure cases are dealt with proportionately, in light of the current pressures on the Crown court. The review will look at when we use our Crown courts and when we should make more use of other courts. Specifically, whether more cases should move from the Crown court to the magistrates court and whether offenders should be given the right to appeal a magistrate’s sentence, where today they are able to appeal their case in the Crown court. Sir Brian will also consider the case for a new “intermediate court” for cases too serious to be heard by a magistrate alone but which could be heard by a judge alongside magistrates.
Second, to look at how the criminal courts could operate more efficiently. This includes consideration of how new technologies, including artificial intelligence, could be used to improve the criminal courts.
The pressure facing our criminal courts is considerable and I am grateful for everyone who works tirelessly across the system to ensure justice is heard. The backlog is at a record high. In the short term, it will continue to rise. But this review will ensure that, in the years to come, we bear down on the backlog. Criminals will face the consequences of their actions more swiftly and victims will receive the justice they deserve.
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Prison Capacity Strategy
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
Integral to this Government’s plan for change is ensuring that we have the prison places we need to lock up dangerous criminals and keep the public safe. On 4 December, the National Audit Office published a scathing report, “Increasing the capacity of the prison estate to meet demand”. It is unequivocal in its criticism of the previous Government’s approach to the criminal justice system, including their commitment to delivering 20,000 additional prison places by the mid-2020s and failure to deliver, with only 500 additional cells being added to the overall prison places stock.
Significant delays to projects—in some cases running years behind schedule—and a failure to address rising demand have left the system thousands of places short of the capacity it requires. It is now clear that even the original mid-2020s commitment was not sufficient to keep pace with the expected demand for prison places, according to the last Government’s own projections. This put the viability of the entire system in jeopardy. Had we run out of prison places, police would not have been able to make arrests and courts could not have held trials. It could have led to a total breakdown of law and order in our country—with all the associated risks to public safety.
The expected cost of the Ministry of Justice’s and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s prison expansion portfolio, to build 20,000 additional places, is currently estimated to be £9.4 billion to £10.1 billion, which is at least £4.2 billion higher than estimated for the 2021 spending review. None of this was revealed by the last Government; it only came to light when I became Lord Chancellor in July of this year.
Today, we publish the 10-year prison capacity strategy and the first annual statement on prison capacity. The strategy is detailed, setting out our commitment to building the 14,000 places the last Government failed to deliver as part of their 20,000 prison place programme, and the aim of completing it by 2031. It further sets out where, when and how we will build new prisons, and expand existing prisons through additional house blocks, refurbishments and temporary accommodation.
This strategy is realistic. Prison building is complex, as is, notably, the planning process to get sites approved for development. It is also costly to the taxpayer. Our delivery plans include contingency places to give resilience to the programme if a project becomes undeliverable or provides poor value for money and cannot be taken forward.
We are ambitious. This strategy sets out our work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to streamline the delivery of prison supply, including reforming the planning system, and delivering on our commitment to ensure that prisons are recognised as nationally important infrastructure. This Government’s ambition is to secure new land, so that we are ready, should further prison builds be required in future.
And we are committed to improving transparency, now and in the future, so we will legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to make it a statutory requirement for the Government to publish an annual statement on prison capacity, like the one we are publishing today. The annual statement will set out prison population projections, the Department’s plan for supply, and the current probation capacity position. This statement fulfils that transparency commitment for 2024, and holds us, and future Governments, to account on long-term planning, so that decisions on prison demand and supply are in balance.
Finally, we are being honest. Building enough prison places is only one part of the prolonged solution. In the coming years, the prison population will continue to increase more quickly than we can build new prisons. This is why, in October, I launched the independent sentencing review. The review will make recommendations in spring 2025, which will help us ensure there is always a prison place for dangerous offenders, that prisons enable offenders to turn their back on crime, and that we expand the range and use of punishment outside of prison.
I consider this 10-year prison capacity strategy and the annual statement, along with the independent sentencing review, necessary steps in our plan to protect the public and restore their confidence in the criminal justice system.
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Oral Answers to Questions
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
We know that prolific offenders represent only 10% of offenders but account for nearly 50% of all sentences. That clearly cannot continue, which is why I have specifically asked David Gauke to look at this issue in the independent sentencing review, to ensure that we have fewer crimes committed by prolific criminals.
Sir Ashley Fox
I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for her answer. Can she tell the House what data her Department holds on the nationality of prolific offenders, and what steps she will take to deport those who are non-British?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Member will know that we retain data on foreign national offenders, and this Government are on track to remove more foreign national offenders this year than in the previous year. I obviously want to make further progress on this issue, and I hope that there will be consensus across the House so that we remove those who commit crimes in this country and who have no right to be here.
Joe Robertson
The Government’s early release scheme has an impact assessment for it to run for 10 years. For however long it does run, will the Government confirm that no prolific offenders will be released early?
Shabana Mahmood
The impact assessment is done over the usual period of time, but I have committed to review the policy 18 months from the moment it was brought in, which is a commitment that we will keep. I recognise that we have a problem with prolific offending. It has gone up over the last decade or so, which is why I have specifically asked the sentencing review panel to consider the interventions that we should make to cut the cycle of prolific offending.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
Retail workers in my constituency tell me that they can predict, almost to the week, when somebody will arrive at their store to begin shoplifting again after their oftentimes all-too-short sentence. Does my right hon. Friend agree with them that the solution to hyper-prolific offending must be longer sentences in certain cases?
Shabana Mahmood
The length of sentences, and how to deal with the problem of prolific offending, will be looked at specifically by the independent sentencing review panel. My hon. Friend will understand why I cannot pre-empt the findings of that review, but he will note that this Government are committed to scrapping the effective immunity for some shoplifting, which was introduced by the previous Conservative Government, by removing the £200 threshold. That shows that we are determined to clamp down on the sort of shoplifting he describes.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
We know that one of the key ways in which we manage prolific offenders is through tagging—both GPS tagging and home detention tagging. The Secretary of State has assured us that the problems with early release tagging have now been resolved, but I understand that problems persist for thousands of other prisoners who are due to be tagged. Can she assure the public that everyone who is being released, and who should be getting a tag, is being tagged on time?
Shabana Mahmood
Yes. The specific problem that the hon. Gentleman refers to, which relates to Serco’s performance and the two tranches of SDS40 releases, has now been resolved. The backlog has been cleared, and Serco’s performance is now back to where it should be. Of course, we will continue to monitor Serco’s overall performance and keep the contract under regular review.
Dr Mullan
The House will have heard that the Secretary of State did not answer my question. I acknowledge that the problems with the early release scheme have been tackled, but I am told by many people working in the criminal justice sector that there are many other delays with the thousands of other prisoners who are due to be tagged. Again, can she assure the House that the thousands of prisoners who are due to be tagged are being tagged on time?
Shabana Mahmood
Yes. There are no additional issues in relation to tagging or the process by which the tagging takes place with Serco, but where there is contract failure by Serco, we will not hesitate to take action. We have already imposed financial penalties for the things that went wrong with the SDS40 releases, and we will keep this issue under regular review. The Prisons Minister in the other place discusses these matters directly with Serco on a regular basis, as do my officials, and we will continue to monitor the situation.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
We took immediate action to prevent the collapse of the prison system by changing the automatic release point for standard determinate sentences. We are building 14,000 new prison places and we will publish our 10-year capacity strategy shortly, which will set out exactly where and by when we will get the places that we need. The previous Government left prisons in crisis. We will fix them for good with that capacity strategy and the independent review of sentencing.
Patrick Spencer
I welcome what this Government are doing to increase prison capacity, but what will the Secretary of State do on tougher sentencing? If she goes to my constituency of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, she will be met with a tough, gruff East Anglian accent that says, “What’s the point of building prison places if you are not going to use them?”
Shabana Mahmood
I am sure the hon. Member’s constituents will also recognise that, even with the new supply that we are building, we will still run out of prison places, as the demand in the system is much greater than the building planned. We simply cannot build our way out of this problem, so to make sure that there is always a prison place for the people who need to be locked up and that we never run out of prison places again, we need an independent review of sentencing.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
The Lady Chief Justice has said that the courts are not operating at full capacity, perpetuating the record numbers in prison on remand, awaiting trial. There could be an extra 6,500 sitting days if the Government allowed them. Cases such as rape and sexual assault are being pushed into 2027. Baroness Carr warned the Justice Secretary that failure to maximise judicial capacity would actually cost the Government more in costly and limited prison places, yet the Justice Secretary failed to agree to her request. Why are the Government letting out criminals rather than hearing more cases?
Shabana Mahmood
I am tempted to remind the shadow Minister about his own Government’s track record. He ought to know that it was my predecessor, his colleague, the former Lord Chancellor who agreed the allocation of sitting days with the Lady Chief Justice and that that concordat agreement was concluded during the election period when the Tories were still conducting business. When the right hon. Gentleman responds, perhaps he would like to explain why the allocation was made for only 106,000 sitting days. What I have done is increase sitting days by a further 500 and increase magistrate courts’ sentencing powers, which is the equivalent of an additional 2,000 Crown court sitting days, in order to start cracking down on that backlog.
Robert Jenrick
Instead of increasing sitting hours, the Justice Secretary’s defining intervention in her five months in office has been to accidentally let out dangerous criminals from our prisons. Just last week, she rushed to Parliament to close loopholes that she created for stalking, for disclosing private sexual images and for murder. She could be signing deals with other countries to get new prisoner transport agreements. She could be using visa sanctions with foreign countries to force them to take back the 10,000 foreign criminals in our prisons. She is not doing so. Meanwhile, criminals are being released and are reoffending already. Will the Justice Secretary commit now to ending her dangerous and unnecessary early release scheme?
Shabana Mahmood
The shadow Minister could at least have apologised to the country for being part of a Government and a party that ran out of prison places. It was the Tory party that ran the system at boiling hot—at over 99% capacity. I hate to remind him, but for months before the previous election, the Tory party operated its own emergency release scheme, which did not have any exclusions for offences connected to domestic abuse. I will take no lessons from him, as it is this Government who are cleaning up the mess that his party left behind.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
SDS40—the standard determinate sentences early release scheme—was an emergency measure that we had to take to avert the complete collapse of the criminal justice system following the shocking inheritance left to us by the previous Government. The emergency measure is not, of course, the solution to the crisis that we inherited. That is why we will build the 14,000 prison places that we need, and have launched the independent review of sentencing.
Sir Edward Leigh
What concerns me is not the past but the future and how to protect the public. Will the Secretary of State assure me that the screening process is sufficiently robust to ensure that violent and dangerous criminals are not released into the community?
Shabana Mahmood
I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that the past is relevant in so far as it sets the context for the crisis that we have inherited, which needs resolving. Given that we all but ran out of prison places—numbers had fallen to fewer than 100 in the summer—it is important that we recognise that the prison system is and has been on the point of collapse. That is why we had to take emergency measures. We have made exclusions to the SDS40 scheme that should take account of his concerns. It is of course important that offenders are monitored and supervised effectively when they are not in prison, and that is what we are trying to do now. Tech can play a bigger role there, and I have asked the independent review into sentencing to look into that.
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman is right to note that, under current legislation, it is possible to exclude only offences, rather than classes of offender. I am sure that his Bill will gain some interest across the House. If any such changes were to be made, they would be for the future, as they do not help us with the current crisis. I will ensure to discuss the details of his Bill with the Home Secretary.
Josh Babarinde
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer—I hope to have the chance to meet her to discuss it in more detail. The Liberal Democrats are deeply concerned about survivors who have been told that, as it stands, their abuser is set to be released early. One such survivor is Elizabeth Hudson, who I met on the set of “Good Morning Britain” today when launching this campaign. She has written to Ministers about her concerns, but says that she has not received a response. Will the Secretary of State meet Elizabeth and me to discuss her case and how survivors can be respected and protected?
Shabana Mahmood
I believe that all who have written have received a response from the Ministry, but I will chase down that specific case. The way we implemented the policy meant that we were able to give the Probation Service time to prepare which was not available to it under the previous Tory Government’s end of custody supervised licence scheme. That means that all victims who were supposed to be notified under the victim contact scheme have been notified.
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
Last week, the National Audit Office released a damning report on the previous Government’s record on prison building, showing that their promise of 20,000 prison places by the mid-2020s was hollow. Unwilling to face down opposition on their own Back Benches, the last Government dithered and delayed, ultimately building less than a third of the cells they promised. As a result, they left our prisons overcrowded and at the point of collapse. Later this week, I will set out in my 10-year capacity strategy a realistic plan for building the 14,000 prison places that we need, and I will ensure that our prisons are never left at the point of collapse again.
Antonia Bance
I thank the Justice Secretary for that answer. In common with many Members of the House, I have heard horrific stories of perpetrators breaching orders to which they are subject, giving them further opportunity to terrorise, injure, or in some cases kill women protected by those orders—may Harshita Brella and so many others rest in peace. What action is the Justice Secretary taking to assess and improve the effectiveness of civil orders in safeguarding survivors of domestic abuse?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend will know that this Government have launched a pilot of domestic abuse protection orders in a number of areas, which will bring together the strongest possible protections for victims in other existing protective orders into a single order. Breaching such orders will be a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison, and unlike other orders, there will be no maximum duration.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
In London, there is a phone theft epidemic, and this time it is not the former Transport Secretary on the loose. Last year, more than 64,000 mobile phones were reported to the police as stolen in the capital alone. The small number of individuals responsible should be locked up for a long time, yet last month, a criminal who used a motorbike to steal 24 phones an hour was jailed for just two years. Enough is enough, so will the Justice Secretary commit to dramatically increasing sentences for career criminals, get them off our streets and slash crime?
Shabana Mahmood
Where was the shadow Secretary of State over the past 14 years when the theft epidemic began? Again, given the scale of his party’s general election defeat, some humility is usually required—perhaps even an apology to the British public—before he and others can earn the right to be heard again. He is right about the issues with mobile phone theft, and the Home Office and the Home Secretary in particular are meeting with tech companies to talk about how we can break the business model of those criminals.
Robert Jenrick
Cousin marriage has absolutely no place in Britain. The medical evidence is overwhelming that it significantly increases the risk of birth defects, and the moral case is clear in that we see hundreds of exploitative marriages that ruin lives. Frankly, it should have been stamped out a long time ago. Will the Justice Secretary commit to ending this medieval practice, which is rearing its head once again in modern Britain?
Shabana Mahmood
The right hon. Member will know that there has been a recent Law Commission report on marriage law more generally. The Government are going to consult on broader reform of marriage law, and we will certainly consider the issues that he has raised before setting out a public position.
Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
Shabana Mahmood
I thank my hon. Friend. Tagging technology can monitor offenders effectively in the community. We have tags that monitor curfews and exclusion zones, tags to impose home detention—in effect, the equivalent of house arrest—and sobriety tags with a 97% compliance rate. We are currently looking at expanding the use of technology to improve productivity in the Probation Service. We will also fund an additional 5,000 new tags to expand the use of tech outside prison.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Shabana Mahmood
We are currently using a data collection and publication approach inherited from the previous Conservative Government—probably from the hon. Member’s time as an adviser to the former Home Secretary and Prime Minister—but I will continue to monitor the data that we collect and publish. We are committed to ensuring that we deport foreign national offenders, and are on track to deport more this year than were deported in the previous year. We will make more progress in that respect.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Ind)
Shabana Mahmood
There are no girls currently in Wetherby. We have not changed and will not be changing the policy we inherited from the previous Government in relation to single-sex spaces and the prison system; that policy will remain as it has been. The women’s justice board will consider the issues that relate to female offenders across the women’s estate.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
Shabana Mahmood
The independent sentencing review will be making recommendations to ensure that our sentencing legislation and framework is fit for purpose and that we always have prison places for those who need to be locked up, so that our prisons create better citizens out of criminals and we can expand the use of punishment outside prison. I will not get ahead of what that review might recommend but it will look at all those issues in the round.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The smuggling of illegal drugs into prisons has been a problem for many years. The last Government spent over £100 million trying to deal with the issue; what plans do the current Government have to try to comprehensively deal with it?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman is right: drugs are rife in too many of our prisons and that problem has been very difficult to challenge, both for the previous Government and no doubt for us as well. We have to crack down on the supply of drugs into our prisons, which is why we are expanding the use of no-fly zones. The hon. Gentleman will know that scanners have already been used, but hardened criminals are increasingly moving on to using drones instead. We will crack down on supply but we also need to look at demand and getting more of our prisoners off drugs while they are in prison.
Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)
The current court backlog across England is an indictment of the previous Government, with almost 1,800 cases in Nottinghamshire alone. Rape victims are waiting on average over a year to have their case brought to trial, if it gets that far. What is the Department doing to prioritise these cases and restore faith in the criminal justice system for victims of rape and serious sexual offences?
Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)
To boost public confidence in the criminal justice system, can the Minister confirm that the Government will not resort to increased dependency on community sentences, many of which are unserved?
Shabana Mahmood
As the hon. Gentleman will have heard me say many times, we have brought forward an independent sentencing review to look at the issues of sentencing in the round to ensure that we are never again in the position where we are about to run out of prison places and cannot lock up those who must be locked up for reasons of public protection. The review will also make recommendations on how prisoner rehabilitation can help people turn their lives around and, more importantly, cut the number of victims that would result from reoffending.
Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)
Last month in Basingstoke, three women were victims of spiking while on nights out. That appalling crime robs individuals of their autonomy, puts lives at risk and leaves women feeling unsafe. Victims, including Skylar, Laura and Jade, have highlighted serious gaps in the awareness of and response to spiking, so I welcome the Government’s pledge to make spiking a specific criminal offence and to train thousands of night-time economy staff. Will the Minister update the House on how the proposed measures will be implemented to prevent further incidents in towns such as Basingstoke?
Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)
Nearly 3,000 prisoners are still incarcerated under imprisonment for public protection sentences, which were abolished more than 12 years ago, many for offences not intended to be covered by such sentences. Will the Justice Secretary commit to expediting the Government plans to re-sentence all prisoners still stuck on indefinite IPP sentences to free up limited prison capacity?
Shabana Mahmood
First, the last Conservative Government were right to abolish the IPP sentencing regime, but that has left us with a cohort within our prison system who are still serving these sentences. I am determined to make more progress in ensuring that, when safe to do so, more of those individuals can come out of prison, but I will not do so in a way that compromises public protection, as some of these individuals pose a real risk to the public. I will not conduct a re-sentencing exercise, because that would have the effect of releasing everyone immediately, but we will make progress on getting more people properly rehabilitated and out of prison.
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
Section 127 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 bans prison officers from taking industrial action and limits trade unions’ ability to protect prison officers from attacks on their terms and conditions and wages. Thankfully, these fundamental trade union rights have been reinstated for prison officers in Scotland. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is time for section 127 to change so that workers’ rights are fully restored for prison officers in the rest of the UK?
Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s approach in recognising that we cannot continue as we have done. She will know that county lines are having an impact in towns and cities across the country, with a particularly devastating impact on children. Can she outline the options that the sentencing review might explore to effectively disrupt the criminal networks and protect vulnerable young people?
Shabana Mahmood
The sentencing review will primarily look at the sentencing framework and how we treat different cohorts of offenders within that. It will consider drug crime, too, but on the specific issue of county lines, I will ensure that my hon. Friend gets a response from the Home Office.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Only a couple of days ago, a prisoner was let out under the Government’s early release scheme. He was wanted for removing his GPS tag. What assessment has been made on the reoffending rates so far since the start of the scheme?
Shabana Mahmood
Anybody who breaches their licence conditions can be recalled immediately to prison. If somebody removes their tag, they can and will be recalled. We have not seen higher than normal rates of recall under the SDS40 scheme, and we have not changed our projections on prison capacity.
Domestic Murder Sentencing Reforms
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
This Government have set out our ambition to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. Today, I am announcing that the Law Commission has accepted my request to undertake a review of the law of homicide and the sentencing framework for murder. In addition, I intend to bring forward legislation to implement two outstanding recommendations in the independent domestic homicide sentencing review undertaken by Clare Wade KC, which was published last year.
Law Commission review
The law of homicide was last subject to a thorough review by the Law Commission in the early 2000s. At that time the Government decided not to implement the majority of the recommended changes. In the almost 20 years since then, the problems identified in that review have remained largely unchanged, and, as society and the law has moved on, new issues have emerged. These include the interactions between the law on homicide and joint enterprise and the extent to which the law reflects a modern understanding of the effects of domestic abuse. Following the Nottingham attacks last year, the families of the victims have also called for homicide law reform, particularly with regard to how diminished responsibility should be reflected in the classification of homicide offences.
Our current sentencing framework for murder was first introduced over 20 years ago, and multiple, piecemeal amendments have been made to it since then. Recent concerns particularly relate to gendered disparities for murders committed in a domestic context. These concerns include the inadequate reflection of prior abuse in minimum terms for abusive men who kill their female victims, and disproportionately long tariffs for women who kill their male abusers.
I have asked the Law Commission to undertake a project to consider these issues, revisiting and building upon their report in the early 2000s. The Law Commission will review the law relating to homicide offences, including full and partial defences to those offences, and this time also the sentencing framework for murder.
The Law Commission has already started work on a project reviewing the defences to homicide for victims of domestic abuse who kill their abuser. That project will continue under the umbrella of this full review of homicide law, allowing the Law Commission to consider the issue holistically, moving beyond defences to consider the homicide offences themselves and sentencing for this group of defendants.
The Law Commission expects to begin work on this review in early 2025, at which point they will publish a detailed timeline for the project. The terms of reference and more information on the review can be found on the Law Commission’s website.
The separate, independent sentencing review, chaired by the right hon. David Gauke, is due to submit its findings to me by spring 2025. The Law Commission review will take account of any relevant recommendations made in the sentencing review.
Domestic homicide sentencing review recommendations
We anticipate that the Law Commission review will take several years to complete, and the Government will then need to consider the recommendations and bring forward any necessary legislation. This is the right course of action for such a complex area of law, but it is not a quick one.
I therefore intend to take more immediate action in the short-term by implementing two of the outstanding recommendations made in the domestic homicide sentencing review undertaken by Clare Wade KC. In opposition we welcomed this review and its approach of updating the sentencing framework for murder to reflect the seriousness of domestic homicides, while recognising that care must be taken to ensure that any reforms do not unduly punish cases that involve abused women killing their abuser. We did however call for more to be done, including implementation of more of the recommendations as well as wholesale reform of the sentencing framework for murder.
Therefore, alongside the Law Commission review, I intend to bring forward legislation to implement two of the outstanding recommendations from the domestic homicide sentencing review. These measures are statutory aggravating factors for murders involving strangulation and those connected with the end of a relationship.
In recent years strangulation has been recognised as a method of exerting power and control, particularly in the context of domestic abuse where female victims are assaulted by physically stronger males. Nearly a third of the murder cases analysed by Clare Wade KC as part of her review involved strangulation, all of which involved a male perpetrator and female victim. In over a third of cases, the murder occurred at the end, or perceived end, of the relationship, and in the majority of cases this appeared to be the catalyst for the killing. In all of these cases the perpetrator was male. A murder involving resentment or jealousy by the perpetrator at the end of a relationship is a significant feature of cases involving controlling or coercive behaviour—the final controlling act of an abusive partner.
While it is for the judge to determine the appropriate weight to be given to the aggravating factors in each case, we expect that these measures, along with the recommendations implemented by the previous Government, will have a significant impact on the custodial terms given to the perpetrators in these cases. I intend to lay a statutory instrument to implement these measures, and subject to consultation with the Sentencing Council and parliamentary timings, I anticipate that the legislation will come into force next year. These changes will extend and apply to England and Wales.
I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the families and organisations who have campaigned for change in relation to the issues that the Law Commission review will consider. These include the Joanna Simpson Foundation, Killed Women, and the families of the victims of the Nottingham attacks.
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Personal Injury Discount Rate
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
This morning, I notified the London Stock Exchange Group that I would today lay a statutory instrument to change the discount rate applicable to personal injury lump sum compensation payments in England and Wales to 0.5%. The new rate will come into force on 11 January 2025, in line with the statutory timelines set out in the Damages Act 1996, as amended by the Civil Liability Act 2018.
As Lord Chancellor, it is my statutory duty under the Damages Act to periodically determine the discount rate which courts must consider when awarding compensation for future financial losses in the form of lump sum payments in personal injury cases. This rate is commonly known as the personal injury discount rate.
On 15 July 2024, I met the requirement to review this rate at least every five years when I commenced a review and consulted both HM Treasury and an independent expert panel for their advice. I have now received their advice, for which I am very grateful, and considered it alongside the responses to two recent calls for evidence, as well as further advice, evidence and analysis which has been made available to me. It is on the basis of this evidence, and having followed the review framework set out in the Damages Act, that I have determined that a single rate of 0.5% is the appropriate determination for me to make in this review.
A full statement of reasons, explaining how I have decided upon this rate, will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses. It will also be published on gov.uk, alongside the full advisory report that was provided to me by the expert panel.
[HCWS275]
Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(3 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
I would like to announce that I have completed my report of the first statutory review of the Whiplash Injury Regulations 2021.
Part 1, section 3 of the Civil Liability Act 2018 provides for the Lord Chancellor to set a tariff of damages for whiplash injuries of up to two years in duration and to make regulations to do so. Section 4 of the Act requires the Lord Chancellor to review regulations made under section 3 within three years of implementation.
In summary I have decided to:
maintain the existing split structure of the tariff (whiplash only and whiplash plus minor psychological injury) and to provide additional guidance on defining minor psychological injury;
uprate the tariff by around 15% to account for actual consumer price index inflation to May 2024 and for forecasted inflation to May 2027—the likely date of the next review;
keep the allowable judicial uplift for exceptional injuries or circumstances at its current level of up to 20% of the tariff award; and
make no changes to the definitions on what constitutes appropriate medical evidence and who may provide it for the purposes of the ban on seeking or making an offer to settle a whiplash claim without evidence.
As per the requirements of the Act, I will today lay a report in the Libraries of both Houses with more information on the review, its conclusions and the next steps. I will also shortly commence a consultation on these decisions with the Lady Chief Justice and will provide further information on the implementation timetable in due course.
[HCWS241]
Oral Answers to Questions
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
We are sending too many women to prison, two thirds of whom are non-violent and over half of whom have dependent children, and 75% of the time the child leaves home after the mother is incarcerated. That is why we have launched the women’s justice board, which will set out its strategy in the spring. Its goal is to reduce the number of women in prison and, ultimately, the number of women’s prisons.
Liz Saville Roberts
All Welsh women in prison are held in England, and being far from home adds to the emotional torture of separation from children, but we cannot assess the extent of the separation without public access to Wales-specific disaggregated data. Will the Secretary of State commit to making this information public so that we can ensure that pregnant women and mothers and children have the proper support they need?
Shabana Mahmood
The data on how we track the experiences of women across England and Wales will be work that the women’s justice board—once it is up and running—will be able to look into and make recommendations on, which we will pick up in the spring.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
The immediate purpose of the emergency release scheme was to stop us running out of prison places and to avert a total breakdown of law and order. If we look at the prison population today, it is clear that we have managed to avert the immediate crisis, but this was only a short-term measure; we have also set out a long-term plan to build the prison places that the last Conservative Government failed to build. I have also launched a landmark sentencing review so that we are never forced to look into emergency releases again.
Susan Murray
In my Mid Dunbartonshire constituency, the community justice team are having success in preventing reoffending by working with offenders in a trauma-informed way. It is recognised that short sentences, as has already been mentioned, do not prevent reoffending. Does the Minister agree that the prevention of reoffending is central to reducing costs, job losses, family breakdowns and homelessness?
Shabana Mahmood
It is clear that we have to do better on reducing reoffending, given that 80% of offenders are reoffenders. Cutting reoffending is a strategy for cutting crime, keeping the public safe and helping ex-prisoners to turn their lives around. I am sure that the sentencing review will look carefully at short sentences.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Wanting to see justice delivered more consistently for victims is the key reason I sought election to this place, so it is an enormous privilege to take up this role today.
In response to concerns raised last month about offenders who have been released early not being promptly tagged, the Secretary of State assured the House that she will monitor performance daily. Can the Government now provide concrete assurance to the House and the public that all offenders are being tagged as they should on release?
Shabana Mahmood
I welcome the shadow Minister to his place. I have always enjoyed his contributions to justice debates, so I look forward to working with him where appropriate.
After the Department’s daily monitoring—indeed, monitoring many times a day—I can confirm that the performance of Serco on tagging has improved significantly. As of 28 October, 98% of all tranche 2 SDS40 release visits to install tags had been completed, with a small number of prearranged alternative fittings also scheduled. They are now all covered.
Dr Mullan
Of course, tagging will protect the public only if curfew breaches are addressed swiftly. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether there have been any breaches of tag-monitored curfews? On average, how quickly are those who commit a breach brought back into custody?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman’s question is really about rates of recall, which is what happens when licence conditions are breached, including breaches of curfew. Recall rates for SDS40 releases are tracking similarly to recall rates for other offenders. We will publish those statistics once they have been assured in the usual way, which I believe will be immediately after Christmas.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
I share the public’s view that there are far too many foreign national offenders in our prisons. Since coming into office, we have returned more than 1,500 foreign offenders and, I am pleased to say, we are on track to remove more foreign offenders this year than at any time in recent years.
Wendy Morton
Some 12% of the prison population in England and Wales are foreign national offenders, so what specific action is the Justice Secretary taking to remove FNOs from our prisons and return them to their countries, including through the use of the prisoner transfer agreements that were put in place by the previous Government?
Shabana Mahmood
As I say, we are on track to remove more foreign offenders this year than in previous years. In fact, over the period when the shadow Justice Secretary was the Immigration Minister in the previous Government, the number returned was around 1,300. We have already returned more than 1,500 foreign offenders, utilising all the prisoner transfer agreements at our disposal. We are actively trying to negotiate more such agreements, so that we can continue to speed up removals from this country.
Sir Edward Leigh
The previous Government negotiated a scheme by which we can deport Albanian prisoners back to Albania. It is an excellent scheme; Albania is a completely safe country, of course. Given that those crossing the channel are committing an illegal offence, is there anything legally to stop us arresting them and putting them on a flight straight to Albania? We do not even need to lock them up in Albania; they can just start their journey all over again—what a good deterrent.
Shabana Mahmood
As the right hon. Gentleman well knows, we have legal obligations to those who arrive in this country that have to play out. However, PTAs relate to those who have committed an offence, have been convicted and are being held in the prison estate. They can therefore be removed from this country under a prisoner transfer agreement. We are working with the Albanians to ensure that the PTA with Albania is as effective as possible.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend consider a stand-alone deportation order as part of the sentencing review, so that rather than taxpayers having to pay to imprison foreign offenders for years on end, those offenders are deported back to their country of origin?
Shabana Mahmood
Personally, I am of the view that deportation for somebody who has been convicted and is due to be imprisoned in our country is as good a punishment as serving time in a prison in this country. We are looking actively at what more we can do to make the early removal scheme as effective as possible, including potential options to bring forward the point of early removal from this country. I will be working with colleagues in the Home Office as we develop our plans in this area.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
I think Members from all parties need a reminder about the form in this House for oral questions, Mr Speaker.
Since the last Justice questions, I have launched an independent review of sentencing. It will ensure that there is always space for dangerous offenders in our prisons and that we expand the use of punishment outside prisons, so that no Government are ever forced to release prisoners early again. The Government have also introduced their first Budget and we have seen an additional £850 million of funding for the Ministry of Justice.
I note the arrival of the new shadow Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). While rumour has it that this job was not his first choice and he may have been asked to do it on more than one occasion by his new boss, I warmly welcome him to his new position.
Mr Holden
One of my constituents has been attending court to resolve a matter around divorce and periodical payments since 2015. Although she has achieved positive results at all the court hearings, with many court orders, sadly there have always been errors and incompetence in the system. Will the Minister meet me to discuss these matters so that I can get a final resolution, after almost a decade, for my constituent?
Shabana Mahmood
I am shocked to hear about the extent of the delay in the case of the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent. He is welcome to write to me with the specific details and I will ensure he gets a meeting with the relevant Minister.
Jack Abbott (Ipswich) (Lab/Co-op)
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Police firearms officer Sergeant Blake was a hero and we all want to see individuals like him, who put themselves in the line of fire, respected. What work is the Lord Chancellor doing, alongside the Home Secretary, to review the threshold for prosecution for individuals such as Sergeant Blake, so that they never find themselves in the invidious position that he did?
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his question. He will be aware that charging decisions are a matter for the independent Crown Prosecution Service. What the Home Secretary has announced, and what I have been working with her on, is the introduction of a presumption of anonymity for all firearms officers if they find themselves being charged by the CPS. We believe that such a measure could have made a difference in this case. The Home Secretary has also announced measures that resulted from the police accountability review work undertaken by the previous Government, and we are taking those forward.
Robert Jenrick
I thank the Lord Chancellor for her answer. Jonathan Hall KC, the reviewer of terrorist laws, has said that the authorities should put as much information as they can in the public domain to maintain public trust in terrorist cases, which have the highest public interest. In the void, misinformation takes hold and that diminishes public trust. While of course respecting the judicial process and not commenting on the individual facts of the case, can the Secretary of State explain the reported two-week delay between the CPS making a charging decision with respect to the alleged Southport attacker and it being announced to the general public?
Shabana Mahmood
As the right hon. Member is now the shadow Lord Chancellor, may I remind him that we do not comment on cases that are sub judice? That includes commentary that everyone is aware relates to cases currently going through our legal processes. What I will say is that those are independent decisions for the Crown Prosecution Service, which ultimately decides what charges to bring. In live police investigations into complex cases, it is appropriate that those investigations, the charging decisions and, ultimately, the cases are done by the independent parts of the process and that there is no interference from Government.
Mr Speaker
May I also say that we will be returning to this matter straight after the case, as Members right around the House, including me, have great concerns? I assure the House that we will come back to this subject, but, in the meantime, the trial must go ahead.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
Shabana Mahmood
I have been lobbied by the same group in the west midlands. I will certainly look at the representations that have been made.
Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)
Thomas White was sentenced to three years for theft of a mobile phone in 2012. He remains in a category A prison 12 years later, having received an imprisonment for public protection sentence. Two medical reports this year have confirmed his deteriorating mental health. He recently attempted to set himself on fire and has since stopped taking his medication. Will the Secretary of State meet me and his sister, Clara White, to discuss his case?
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.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the commitment in the Budget to our courts after 14 years of neglect. Truro Crown court is facing a temporary cut to Crown court sitting days until the end of the year. I have previously asked about delayed rape and sexual offences cases at Truro Crown court. Can measures be considered to assist?
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State make available—perhaps through a note in the Library—the number and type of foreign national offenders who, aided by deluded interest groups and dodgy lawyers, are resisting deportation by means of appeal, either to domestic courts or to European—foreign—judges?
Shabana Mahmood
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that all the data that was published under the previous Government will continue to be published by ours.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) pointed out, legal aid is currently restricted to those on the lowest incomes. I have received correspondence from a constituent who, despite being a domestic abuse survivor, cannot access legal aid because her income is above the threshold. Will the Minister consider widening legal aid eligibility to all victims of domestic violence?
Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
I wonder if Ministers are as astounded as I am that Conservative Members are still attacking us, as the shadow Justice Secretary did at the start of this question time, for clearing up their mess in the criminal justice system. Will the Government commit to increasing capacity in our prison system, so that we can deal with the crisis that the Conservatives ran away from?
Shabana Mahmood
The shadow Secretary of State has not necessarily been in position long enough to have acquainted himself with all aspects of his Government’s performance in this area. We will spend more this year on building the prison places that the last Government failed to deliver, and we have launched our landmark sentencing review to ensure that we never again have to make emergency releases.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
HMP Garth has been likened to an airport because of the number of drones that illegally fly drugs into that prison. What urgent action is the Lord Chancellor taking to end that unacceptable situation?
Shabana Mahmood
Drugs getting into prison is a huge issue, and I am very aware of the issues at Garth. The Minister with responsibility for prisons will meet the governors and think about how to deal with those problems in the medium and long term.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
There was welcome news for the Ministry of Justice in the Budget last week, but I did not hear any mention of legal aid funding. When will the criminal legal aid advisory board recommendations and the civil legal aid review be published, and when can we expect to see some reversal of the catastrophic cuts made to legal aid and advice since 2010?
Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity
Shabana Mahmood Excerpts(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on how the Government will address the crisis in our prisons, not just today, but for years to come.
The House has heard me recount my inheritance as Lord Chancellor before. The crisis in our prisons was, I believe, the greatest disgrace of the last Conservative Government. They left our prisons on the point of collapse—a situation that would have forced us to close the prison doors, cancel all trials and force the police to halt arrests. Crime would have gone unpunished, victims would never have seen justice done, and we would have witnessed the total breakdown of law and order. The previous Prime Minister knew he had to act. His Lord Chancellor begged him to do so, but instead he called an election.
As I announced to the House on 18 July, we had no choice but to bring forward the release point for some prisoners. Some of those serving standard determinate sentences have seen the custodial element reduced from 50% to 40%, spending the rest of their sentence on licence. They can be recalled to prison should probation staff judge that necessary to protect the public. As we saw over the summer of disorder, these releases could not come soon enough. After the August bank holiday, we were left with fewer than 100 spaces in our men’s prisons. The system was only held together by the heroic work and considerable good will of our prison and probation staff. We were, on many occasions, just one bad day from disaster.
Today, the second tranche of emergency releases takes place, creating desperately needed space in our prisons, but that is not the long-term solution. I will now set out the long-term plan for our prisons, which will ensure that never again is a Lord Chancellor placed in the invidious position that I was on taking office.
This must begin by building more prisons. For all their rhetoric, the last Conservative Government’s record on prison building was abject. They like to mention that, between 2010 and 2024, they built 13,000 places. What they are less keen to admit is that, in the same time, they closed 12,500. In 14 years, they added just 500 places to our prison capacity. In our first 100 days, this Government are already close to matching that. The previous Government promised to build 20,000 new places by the mid-2020s, but by the time they left office, they had built only 6,000. They were simply too terrified of their own Back Benchers, who supported prison building vociferously, as long as those prisons were not built anywhere near them.
This Government will build the prisons that the last Conservative Government promised but failed to deliver. In seeking a lasting solution to our prisons crisis, we must be honest, in a way that my predecessors were not. We cannot build our way out of this problem. Every year, our prison population grows by around 4,500 prisoners. This is a question of simple mathematics. To build enough prisons to meet this demand we would have to build the equivalent of HMP Birmingham—which is in my constituency of Birmingham Ladywood—four and a half times over, every single year. To put that in context, in the past 10 years, the last Conservative Government built just three prisons. While we will speed up prison building and build as fast as we can, that pace is simply impossible. For that reason, if we are to address our prisons crisis, we must be smarter about who receives a prison sentence.
Let me be clear: there will always be a place for prison, and there will always be offenders who must be locked up, but we must expand the range of punishments we use outside prison and consider how we punish those offenders who have broken our rules but are not a danger to society. For that reason, today I am launching a review of sentencing. It will have one clear goal: to ensure that we are never again in a position where we have more prisoners than we have space in our prisons.
The review will follow three principles. First, sentences must punish offenders and protect the public. For dangerous offenders, prison will always remain the answer. Punishment and public protection will be the Government’s first priority. There are some offenders whom I will task the review with considering, such as prolific offenders, who account for just one in every 10 individuals, but nearly half of all sentences. Some of them are hyper-prolific offenders, committing hundreds of crimes. I will ask the reviewers to consider whether a longer sentence might punish them better and force them to engage with rehabilitation on the inside.
The second, related, principle of the review is that sentences must encourage offenders to turn their backs on crime—we need both sticks and carrots. I will be encouraging the reviewers to learn from others who have succeeded. In Texas, for instance, Republican legislators faced a problem similar to ours: a soaring prison population; sky-high reoffending rates; and prisons that had run out of space. Working across political divides, the Texans introduced a system of good behaviour credits, where well-behaved prisoners could earn time off their sentence by engaging in rehabilitation programmes. The results were remarkable. Crime fell by nearly a third, reaching the lowest levels in half a century. The prison population fell by over 20,000, and after two decades, the Texans had closed 16 prisons rather than building new ones.
The third principle of the review is that it must expand the punishment that offenders receive outside of prison. There are already ways that we severely constrain offenders, limiting their freedom outside of prison. Those under home detention curfews are, in practice, under a form of house arrest. With a tag on their ankle and a sensor in their home, they are placed under curfew, generally for 12 hours each day. Should they break that curfew, they can be picked up and, if needs be, locked up.
In some ways, punishment outside of prison can be even more restrictive than prison. It is a sad fact that in many of our prisons today, a drinker can all too easily procure a drink. On a sobriety tag, however, with their sweat measured every 30 minutes and a 97% compliance rate, their teetotalism is almost as strict as mine. All of that is just using the technology that is immediately available to us, and used already in this country. I will be inviting the reviewers to consider the technology they have available to them now, and the next frontier of technology, used in other countries but not yet in ours. I believe that the modern world presents us with the opportunity to build a prison outside of prison, where the eyes of the state follow a prisoner more closely than any prison officer can.
Moving punishment out of prison for those who can be safely managed there has huge benefits. Outside of prison, offenders can engage in work that pays back the communities and individuals whom they have harmed. The evidence is abundantly clear that those who serve their sentences outside prison are far less likely to reoffend. That cuts crime, with fewer victims and safer streets, and reduces the huge cost to society of reoffending, most recently valued at over £22 billion a year.
This Government believe that crime must have consequences and criminals must be punished. We also believe in rehabilitation—that those who earn the right must be encouraged to turn their backs on crime. This Government believe in prison, but we must increase the use of punishment outside of prison too. The sentencing review will be tasked with pursuing those goals.
I am pleased to say that the review will be led by a former Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, a highly regarded Minister who served in multiple roles across Government. He has rightly gained the respect of both the judiciary and the legal sector, as well as many within this House. I will work with him to assemble a panel of reviewers who will draw together deep expertise and experience in the criminal justice system. The review will take a bipartisan and evidence-based look at an issue that has for far too long been a political football, booted around by both sides. David Gauke will report back with his recommendations in the spring, and I have placed a copy of the complete terms of reference of the review in the Library of the House.
It is right that the review is given time to do its work. As I have noted already, however, the capacity crisis in our prisons has not gone away. When we introduced emergency measures we believed that they had bought us about a year, but after the summer of disorder, the next crisis could be just nine months away. For that reason, I announced last week an extension of the sentencing powers of magistrates courts, which allows us to bear down on the remand population in our prisons. But we must go further.
While I will not countenance any further emergency releases of prisoners, there are operational measures that I will lay before the House in the months ahead. The first, which I have already referenced, is home detention curfew. This modern form of house arrest curtails freedom and helps offenders turn their lives around. Offenders are subject to electronically monitored curfews, which must be imposed for nine hours a day, are generally 12 hours long, and can extend to 16 hours.
As the shadow Lord Chancellor noted in the House in February, the reoffending rate for the average prisoner, which was measured a few years ago, is close to 50%, but for offenders released on a home detention curfew, it is 23%. This Government will soon extend the use of that measure, following in the footsteps of the previous Administration, who rightly expanded its use on a number of occasions. We will increase the maximum period that eligible offenders can spend under house arrest from six months to 12 months.
The second measure that we will introduce will address the soaring recall population, which has doubled from 6,000 to 12,000 in just six years. Risk assessed recall review is a power of the Secretary of State to re-release, on licence, those who pose a low risk to the public, avoiding the long waits they often face for a Parole Board hearing. In the past, the measure was used often: it was used between 1,000 and 1,500 times each year between 2017 and 2019; but its use has fallen in recent years, reaching as low as 92 times in 2022.
Later this month, I intend to review the risk assessed recall review process, so that lower-risk cases can be considered for re-release after they have been recalled to prison for two to three months, and where their further detention is no longer necessary to protect the public. I should note that this will only change the cases that can be considered for release, with the final decision still in the hands of experienced probation officers and managers.
The final area where I intend to make progress is in the case of foreign national offenders. I share the public’s view that, with 10,000 in our prisons, there are far too many foreign offenders in this country, costing £50,000 each a year to house at His Majesty’s pleasure. It happens to be my personal view that deportation is as good a punishment as imprisonment, if not better. We are currently on track to remove more foreign national offenders this year than at any time in recent years. But I will now be working with my colleagues across Government to explore the ways that we can accelerate that further, including working with the Home Office to make the early removal scheme for foreign offenders more effective.
When I walked into the Ministry of Justice for the first time as Lord Chancellor just over three months ago, I encountered a prison system on the brink of collapse. It was the result of the inaction of the last Government, who thought they could dither and delay, and led us to the precipice of disaster. But their failure was longer in the making: they failed to build the prison places this country needs, and they failed to address the challenge of an ever-rising prison population.
In July, this Government took action to avert immediate disaster, but the plan that I have set out today does more than that. It will ensure that this Government and our successors are never forced to rely on the emergency release of prisoners again—a measure over which I had no choice, one that I took despite my personal beliefs, and one that must never happen again. I commend this statement to the House.
Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)
As always, I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for early sight of her statement, and for her coming to the House to deliver it, giving us the opportunity to ask questions. She is always unfailingly courteous in her dealings with this House.
The Lord Chancellor made several announcements today. It is important that we see the detail of her sentencing review, and that, whatever the outcome, it ensures that victims’ voices are heard throughout, that the worst offenders—for example, violent or sexual offenders—stay behind bars for longer, and that, as she alluded to, prolific offenders who cause so much blight and harm can still be subject to a custodial sentence where appropriate.
We saw an overall fall in reoffending since 2010 under the last Government, from around 31% to just over 25%, but there is of course still more to do. It is right that we look at all sentences, including tough community sentences, through the prism of what reduces reoffending, boosts rehabilitation and best protects the public. With that in mind, I know David Gauke well; he was my first boss as a Minister. He is a decent, honourable, able and thoughtful man, and I regard him as a friend, so I will not prejudge what he will conclude in his review. But the Opposition will rightly, as the Lord Chancellor would expect, scrutinise the review when it is published, and hold the Government to account on the choices they make on how to proceed subsequently. I hope the review’s terms of reference might include not just male prisoners, but female prisoners and female offenders, building on the female offenders strategy that David Gauke and I put in place many years ago.
As the Lord Chancellor has set out, prison capacity has been under significant pressure for some time, and while the situation was incredibly acute in 2008, 2009 and 2010, it remains a significant challenge. That is due to an increased average sentence length for first offenders—for which we make no apology—matched by the biggest prison-building programme since the Victorian era, with thousands of additional places built while tackling the legacy of the crumbling prison estate we inherited in 2010 and the Labour party’s absolute failure to build the 7,500 Titan prison places it promised while in government. Of course, though, the impact on the remand population of the decisions to not mass release during the pandemic and to rightly retain jury trials, compounded by the Bar strike, undoubtedly significantly increased pressure despite our prison-building programme.
The Lord Chancellor has set out her chosen approach, with more convicted criminals released today at the 40% point of their sentence, rather than the 50% point in tranche 2 of SDS40. We are seeing significant levels of concern from victims of crime about that approach—Sky News ran a powerful package this morning highlighting that concern—so I have several important questions on that aspect of the Lord Chancellor’s announcement. She said that she will publish data on SDS40 in the coming weeks in the normal run of statistics. I understand that, but we would be grateful if she could provide the date on which those statistics will be published. In the media this morning, she alluded to the rate of recalls being “very high” but disputed—based on her internal data—that it was as high as 50%, as was suggested on Radio 4. Can she expand on what that rate looks like?
In response to a written question from me, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Sir Nicholas Dakin) acknowledged that hotels are now being used in some cases to accommodate released prisoners under SDS40. In the light of the Lord Chancellor’s commitment at oral questions last month to be transparent about this matter—although it took a written question from me to get that confirmation—how many hotel rooms or places are being used, and at what cost? We have heard little thus far about deporting FNOs, so I am pleased that she has focused on that issue in her remarks, but when will she set out more details of her plans to improve the deportation rate of FNOs, and what targets is she setting for that?
Does the Lord Chancellor now acknowledge that—as we pointed out at the time, and as victims also pointed out—although the Government claimed that domestic abuse and domestic violence offences would be excluded from SDS40, that is simply not the case? DA offenders committing actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm are not excluded. Will she revisit the exclusions list to review this matter? Will she also commit to building more prisons, over and above the six new prisons that we funded and have already been completed or are being built, and will she commit to funding that additional prison building?
Home detention curfew will further reduce the time that convicted criminals spend behind bars. Someone with a four-year sentence who is not excluded from SDS40 would now be out at around 19 months; with the possibility of 12-month HDC, that could mean that they were only inside for just over six months of a four-year sentence. I recognise that the interaction between different schemes and calculations is complex and may be different in individual cases, but can the Lord Chancellor reassure the House that a fixed minimum percentage will always be served by those sentenced to prison?
The Lord Chancellor will appreciate that with layer upon layer of reductions, some people will struggle to see that punishment or public protection are at the fore, so can she clarify a number of further points? While most DA offences would be presumed ineligible for HDC, that presumption is not absolute, and again, many common DA offences such as ABH or common assault are not presumed ineligible. What will the Lord Chancellor do to address that issue? Does she intend to examine the list of exclusions for both schemes—SDS40 and HDC—and come back to the House with a tougher list? Tagging is a vital part of HDC, but while there may be the tags, as she has mentioned, it appears that the ability to fit them swiftly is sadly lacking at present. What reassurances can the Lord Chancellor give that there is now no backlog at all in tagging? What steps is she taking to ensure that victims are contacted when perpetrators are released, and what additional resource is going into victim support services and probation, over and above what we had already committed to?
Turning to the rehabilitation activity requirement, it is right that experienced staff judge these cases. As the Lord Chancellor knows, the smaller numbers reflect both risk assessment and the complex interaction of RAR with other release schemes. I therefore fear that the bounty she might expect to get from the changes she intends to make will be limited. Will she confirm details of those proposed changes for the House in due course?
Finally, and most importantly, as I pressed the Lord Chancellor on last week, it is vital that the criminal justice system is not subject to a flat budget or, worse, cuts in next week’s Budget—cuts that would let down victims, those who work in the system, and the public. I fully appreciate that she will not be able to prejudge that Budget, either at the Dispatch Box or in the media, but a fair financial settlement, alongside her setting out her long-term plans for the system—a little of which I acknowledge we have seen today—will be absolutely essential if victims and the public are to have confidence in her Government on law and order.
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the shadow Lord Chancellor for the courteous way in which he has approached this debate, and for his detailed questions.
Let me start with his point in relation to the sentencing review. The voice of victims will be heard: there will be a representative with experience of working with victims to make sure that is covered in the review, and I look forward to announcing further members of that review panel over the coming days. The review will be free to consider every aspect of the sentencing framework, including the use of whole-life orders and minimum sentences. We have not constrained the sentencing review in any way: the review panel should take a proper look at the sentencing framework that we have and go where the evidence takes them.
I acknowledge the progress that was made on reducing reoffending, but as the shadow Lord Chancellor accepts, there is much more to do. We know that 80% of offenders are reoffenders and that 90% of those sentenced to custody are reoffenders. We have a big problem with that revolving door in and out of our prisons—as a country, that is a significant challenge that we must overcome. As I said, I will be placing the terms of reference in the House of Commons Library. The shadow Lord Chancellor will be pleased to see that those terms of reference refer to cohorts of offenders, including female offenders. He will also know that in my conference speech in September, I laid out a different approach to how this Government deal with women in our prisons.
Shabana Mahmood
I know that the shadow Lord Chancellor followed it closely. I am setting up a women’s justice board, which will report with a strategy in the spring. We need to do more with female offenders, especially given the impact that the incarceration of women and the breaking up of family homes has on their children, particularly as two thirds of women in prison are there for non-violent offences. I hope there is cross-party consensus in this House on dealing with women offenders differently.
On prison capacity, I say gently to the shadow Lord Chancellor that we can trade numbers across this Dispatch Box about things that the last Labour Government did before 2010, or he might want to acknowledge the failure that took place over his Government’s 14 years in power. He knows that only 500 net prison places were added by his Government over those 14 years, and that the crisis that faced me when I walked into the Department was acute—he knows that, because he had walked out of that same Department only a few days before. The previous Government ran our prisons boiling hot for far too long, so my inheritance when I took over was dire, leaving me with no option other than the emergency release of prisoners.
I note the shadow Lord Chancellor’s point about domestic abuse and domestic violence cases, but I remind him that his own early release scheme that his Government implemented for many months before the last general election—the so-called end of custody supervised licence scheme—contained none of the SDS40 exclusions. He knows that; he also knows that we pulled every lever available to us within the law to exclude the offences that are most closely connected to domestic abuse and domestic violence. As a matter of law, it is only possible to exclude offence types, rather than offenders. I have had to pull that emergency lever; I have sought to do so in the safest way possible, to make as many exclusions as possible, and to give the Probation Service the time it needs to prepare for this measure and to make sure victims are notified under victim notification schemes in the usual way.
I will be publishing the data in relation to tranche 1 and 2 releases in two ad hoc statistical releases before Christmas, so that data will be in the public domain. As the shadow Lord Chancellor will know from his time in the Department, the recall rate usually hovers between 6% and 10%—it can vary quite a bit between those numbers. Our current information is that the SDS40 releases are not showing a higher recall rate than we would expect compared with normal releases, but those statistics will of course be published in the usual way in due course.
On hotels, I made provision to allow the emergency use of hotel accommodation for prisoners released under the SDS40 scheme to prevent any homelessness that might lead to higher rates of recall. Fewer than 20 prisoners have been housed in hotels, and at a very low cost. This is a temporary measure, and I do not anticipate that it will be used any more extensively than it has been already. On foreign national offenders, I will return to this House on that matter, but work is under way across Government and I am working closely with my colleagues in the Home Office.
I will be publishing for the House, and will return to the House with, the detail of the further measures on the home detention curfew. The shadow Lord Chancellor rightly says that not everybody is automatically eligible for a home detention curfew. There is still a risk assessment, and safeguarding concerns are the No. 1 way in which domestic abuse issues show up as a red flag for a particular prisoner. I would not imagine that those previous and current arrangements will change very much with the measures we will take.
I thank the shadow Lord Chancellor for the contract concluded with Serco to deliver the tagging. It may not have been him directly and personally, but it was his Government. The performance of Serco has been unacceptable. Let me be very clear with the House: there is no shortage of tags in this country. It has failed to make sure that it has enough staff in place to tag everybody who needs a tag. Its progress has been monitored daily by me, my Ministers and officials in the Department, and we will continue to hold its feet to the fire. We will levy financial penalties, and all options remain on the table. Performance has improved a little—it has made progress—but all options are on the table if that falls back in any way.
The shadow Lord Chancellor will know that I am not going to comment on anything relating to the Budget. The Chancellor will make her statement in due course. I gently remind him that the budgets of the Ministry of Justice under the Tory party left a lot to be desired.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
I welcome the approach the Lord Chancellor is taking to the management of the prison system, and the appointment of David Gauke to head the sentencing review. Given that the initiatives she has announced today to relieve pressure on prisons will create additional work for already overstretched probation officers, will she make a further statement when she has decided what operational changes she is going to make to the Probation Service? The additional 14,000 prison places she has promised to build will take prison capacity to above 100,000. Is that desirable in the long term? Given her intention to expand punishment outside prison, will she make it her aim in time to close some of the worst of our existing prisons, built two or three centuries ago, which warehouse crime and, despite the best efforts of prison staff, do little or nothing to reform or rehabilitate their inmates?
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his questions. On probation, I recognise the very high workloads that probation officers are working under. We committed in our manifesto to a strategic review of probation governance. I have made sure that we have brought forward the recruitment of an extra 1,000 probation officers by March next year. We are working closely with probation unions and probation staff on the frontline to manage the situation. I am very conscious that we do not want to take the pressure out of the prisons and just leave it with the Probation Service instead. This is a whole-system response, and the whole system needs to be stabilised and able to face the pressures we see in it.
On the prison population, make no mistake: the number of prison places will increase in this country. We will deliver the 14,000 the previous Government did not deliver, and the prison population will therefore rise. However, as I have said, we cannot build our way out of this crisis, and we do have to do things differently. We are a very long way away from any of the changes the Chair of the Select Committee may want to see, but fundamentally we must make sure, and the review must make sure, that we never ever run out of prison places in this country again.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement.
Having myself grown up in a home of domestic violence at the hands of my mum’s former partner, I share the concerns of the Victims’ Commissioner and survivors of domestic abuse that loopholes in the early release scheme’s criteria could mean that some of their abusers, who have been convicted of violent offences but not of domestic violence-specific offences, may have been released early today. I know the Secretary of State attempted to provide some reassurances, but I can say to her that I have received communications from affected people outside this Chamber who are not satisfied with those assurances yet. Domestic abuse survivors deserve to be safe. Can she address these concerns today?
We welcome the Government’s determination to fix the mess that the Conservatives made of our criminal justice system through the evidence-led, independent sentencing review. The former Lord Chancellor chairing it and I have a track record of fixing things together. In my past life, I used to run a social enterprise phone repair company staffed by ex-offenders, and we ran pop-up repair shops in the MOJ, at one of which the then Lord Chancellor David Gauke eagerly presented his phone for repair. I hope this Lord Chancellor shares that collaborative fixing spirit when it comes to engaging with the Liberal Democrats and me on this review—and I will happily sort the Secretary of State out with a phone repair if she needs one.
While empirical evidence will be critical to this review, some of the most valuable insights on this matter are held by victims and survivors themselves. I was therefore disappointed not to find the words “victim” or “survivor” mentioned once anywhere in the terms of reference, although I have heard the Secretary of State say them today. Will she put that right, and outline specifically how victims and survivors will be represented and formally consulted in the sentencing review?
Finally, even though the Secretary of State has said there will be no constraints and no constrictions, something else missing from the review is the injustice of indeterminate imprisonment for public protection sentences, under which almost 3,000 people remain imprisoned with no release date. What is more, people are serving IPP sentences who have committed lesser offences than those being released today under the Government’s early release scheme. Reforming these sentences could help address prison overcrowding and the safety crisis, so why have the Government explicitly excluded IPP sentences from this review, and will she reconsider that decision?
Shabana Mahmood
I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for his questions. I am sorry to hear about his personal experiences, but they will of course inform the valuable contributions that he makes in this House from his own lived experience.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is not a specific offence of domestic abuse in our legislative framework. To bring in the emergency release scheme to prevent us from running out of prison spaces in July, I have pulled every lever at my disposal. We can make these changes in law only by excluding offences, not offender cohorts or offender types. That is why the list of offences covered includes those most closely connected to domestic abuse situations, but it is not of course fully comprehensive. It cannot be, because we can exclude only offences, not offender types. I hope he will recognise that I pulled these levers as early as possible in the Parliament—almost as soon as I walked into the Department—because I wanted to give the Probation Service time to prepare for this change. Specifically, it was so that it could notify victims, work on proper release plans for these offenders, make sure that the licence conditions are the right ones and make sure that the monitoring of these offenders in the community is as strong as it needs to be.
The hon. Gentleman will also know that those who are flagged as having a domestic violence background are prioritised for tags. Every choice I have made in bringing forward these emergency release changes has been made to try to minimise the impact on victims. I really empathise with and am very affected by the concerns of victims that those who have offended against them are being released some weeks or months early. That might sound small, but I know it has a huge impact, and I do not seek to minimise that in any way. As I say, I have pulled every lever at my disposal to try to minimise those concerns.
On the sentencing review, when we reveal the whole panel we will ensure that victims’ voices are represented, as that is important. In the terms of reference we have tried to capture the fact that all of society suffers collectively when we do not get reoffending rates down. This is a strategy for cutting crime and producing fewer victims in future, which I hope the hon. Gentleman will support.
IPP sentences are specifically excluded. That is a challenging cohort of prisoners in our system, and where it is safe to do so I am determined to make progress on releasing those who are currently serving an IPP sentence. I worked with the previous Government and supported changes to the licence terms and conditions brought in by the Conservative Administration. We are implementing changes that were made in the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, which was enacted just before the general election. What we cannot do is release people who still pose a risk to the public, and with this cohort of offenders I cannot release those who are still a danger to themselves and to others. Getting that balance right is incredibly important, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that it is not appropriate to put that cohort of offenders within the sentencing review.
Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)
Under the Conservative Government, more than one in two people who served short-term custodial sentences went on to reoffend. In total, reoffending is costing our country £20 billion a year. That is not working at all, and not working for the taxpayer. In my constituency, and across Hertfordshire, fantastic charities such as the Hertfordshire Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders are running innovative and pioneering programmes, and working with ex-offenders to ensure that they do not offend again. Will my right hon. Friend say a little more about how the Government will adopt a new approach and work with charities and broader civil society to cut reoffending for good?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is right: reoffending has a huge cost for us all as a country because it creates more victims of crime. Indeed, it costs us more than £20 billion at about £22 billion a year. Charities and other groups have a huge role to play in helping to bring down the reoffending rate, but to allow that work to succeed we must bring down overcrowding and the capacity crisis in our prisons. I hope the sentencing review will help us to chart a new course when it comes to bringing down reoffending.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
I thank the Lord Chancellor for her statement. In the first wave of early releases, 37 prisoners were wrongly released. What steps is she taking to ensure that those mistakes are not repeated? Does she agree that the best way to reduce reoffending is to ensure that released prisoners are able to participate in the labour market, and what will she do to improve education and training within the prison system?
Shabana Mahmood
On the 37 who were wrongly released, I had never imagined that it would be possible for people to be charged and sentenced under an older Act of Parliament, and not the more recent Sentencing Act 2020, and as soon as that issue was brought to our attention we took immediate steps. All 37 were ultimately returned to custody, and I will ensure that that mistake cannot happen again. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about reducing reoffending. Access to literacy training and skills and the ability to get a job are important in helping an offender turn their back on a life of crime, and I hope the sentencing review will make further positive suggestions on that. We know we have to tackle reoffending, and we know that jobs, housing and so on are part of the picture if we are to persuade people to become the better citizens that we need them to be, rather than the better criminals that our system currently produces.
Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s review of sentencing, but as she may know, people who are neurodivergent are hugely over-represented in the prison population. What steps will she take to ensure that prisoners with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism do not reoffend?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is right to say that the support prisoners receive in prison must be tailored to take account of needs such as neurodivergence and autism, much of which has gone undiagnosed in the life of prisoners, and often does not even get diagnosed within the prison estate. We must obviously turn that around, and I am confident we can make progress in that area. First we have to deal with the capacity crisis, because when prisons are very overcrowded offenders are locked up for 23 hours a day, and in that one remaining hour little good work can be done. We must deal with the capacity problems so that we can then deal with the underlying issues that prisoners face before they can make the positive choices that we all want.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The Secretary of State has identified a good set of principles for her review. On the Texan approach, does she think that it would be fairer to victims if, rather than us looking at extending early release further, we used the reward of the existing access to early release? She talked a lot about evidence, but she will understand that it is harder to evidence victims’ feelings about justice, and that risks greater weight being given to statistics on reoffending, and other information that the Ministry of Justice has to hand. How does she propose to close the gap in evidence relating to how victims and their families feel about sentencing?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman makes good point. The Texan model is of interest because it sought to incentivise the positive behaviour that reduces reoffending and ultimately cuts crime, and Texas saw some pretty spectacular results. There is no exact read-across from that model to our system, and it will be for the review to consider that model and others around the world to see what approaches might work here. It is imperative that any measures we take retain the confidence of victims and the wider public. Any punishment that takes place outside a prison needs to still look and feel like proper punishment to every community in our country. That is non-negotiable. Public confidence must be maintained, and that speaks to the hon. Gentleman’s second point. Evidence is important, and in my experience, when victims are engaged in the process, they appreciate the need to reduce reoffending, because they do not want other people to be victims. Their voice will be heard in the review; I hope that reassures him.
Jake Richards (Rother Valley) (Lab)
In June 2019, David Gauke made a speech as Lord Chancellor on smarter sentencing. It was a helpful, coherent, cogent, evidence-based speech about sentencing reform. Four Conservative Prime Ministers later, no progress has been made, so I am pleased that the Labour Government will grasp the nettle. We were just discussing the Texan example of problem solving and sentencing, but can the Lord Chancellor reassure me that the review will also consider family, drug and alcohol courts, and the progress and positive results that we have seen in the family courts?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend makes the case well for why David Gauke is the right person to lead this review. As I said, he brings deep expertise to this debate. I am sure that the sentencing review panel will be interested, as many are, in some of the pilots that are being run on problem-solving courts, and also in the family courts.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
What measures is the Lord Chancellor taking to ensure that the review considers the impact of sentencing polices on different socioeconomic groups, and addresses concerns about disproportionate sentences for marginalised communities and minority groups?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Member raises an important point. That issue is not within the review’s terms of reference. It will not consider disparities in sentencing because it is looking at the overall sentencing framework, and how we ensure that we never run out of prison places again. There is an important debate on disparities in the criminal justice system. The review on sentencing is not the proper place for that, but we will take forward that other work in due course.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Ind)
I declare an interest: I am the honorary life president of the Prison Officers Association. I thank the Secretary of State on behalf of the POA for her open-door policy on engagement with the union. I congratulate her on bringing forward the sentencing review. The POA has long argued that there are too many people in prison, in particular with mental health problems. They include veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder who should not be there, but should be treated elsewhere. Will she ensure that the unions are fully involved in deciding on the composition of the panel and the engagement process for the review?
Shabana Mahmood
Working closely with our trade unions is important to us. We have already engaged with the Prison Officers Association. Let me place on record my thanks to all who work in our prisons and our probation system. In our prisons in particular, the rates of violence against prison officers have been too high for too long. I salute the hard work that prison officers do in a difficult job on behalf of us all. My right hon. Friend can be assured of our close engagement with everybody who works in His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service going forward.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Parliament legislated for a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for causing death by dangerous driving, but judges are yet to impose such a sentence, despite such cases as the one in my constituency in which three people were killed by a driver in a case with five aggravating factors. Will the Lord Chancellor ensure that when the review considers longer custodial sentences, it looks at how victims can get justice, and how the maximum sentences legislated for by this place are applied?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Member will know that sentencing decisions in individual cases are a matter for the independent judiciary, who have to consider all the facts in front of them and sentence accordingly, based on the law, the sentencing guidelines and the framework. I cannot comment on the specifics of the case he mentions. The review will not be constrained in any way in its inquiry, or on maximum sentences, whole life orders and so on. The whole range of sentences that are available is open for the review panel to consider and make recommendations on.
Mr Calvin Bailey (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for her handling of the issue and the approach she is taking in response to the challenges she faces. This morning, I met local police leadership to discuss the challenges around drug-based criminality in Leyton and Wanstead. The situation they face could not be clearer. After 14 years of Tory failure, overstretched police services, over-capacity prisons and woefully underfunded probation services and councils have led to a vicious cycle of reoffending. Does she agree that the whole system needs reform and investment to restore public trust in our justice system, and to keep my constituents safe?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend will know that in our safer streets mission, improving confidence in the criminal justice system is one of the key outcomes we are focused on. He is right to make the point that the whole criminal justice system requires stabilisation. It all needs to be put on a better trajectory than the one we inherited from the previous Government. We are talking in detail about prisons, but it is difficult to divorce what is happening in our prison system from what is going on in probation and the courts. I reassure him that I conceive of this as a whole-system approach. I am aware of the challenges in other bits of the system; they are things that this Government will ultimately sort out.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor speaks with great clarity and determination on this issue, and I am sure that she will remember last week promising me a ministerial meeting involving my constituent, Andrew Duncan, and a specialist team. They are working on a new concept of community detention that I believe is tailor-made for the vision that the Lord Chancellor has outlined to us today. Can she confirm that the meeting will go ahead, notwithstanding the extra opportunity to give evidence to the Gauke review in due course?
Shabana Mahmood
I knew immediately that the right hon. Gentleman was going to ask about the meeting he referenced last week, when I made my other statement. I assure him that I will follow that up. I am interested in the work of the group that he mentions, and I am sure that the sentencing review panel will also be interested in it.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
I thank the Lord Chancellor for her statement, and for the leadership she has shown in trying to turn around a Department that, by any metric, was failing. I thank her for the transparent and considered approach that she has taken in reaching some of the difficult decisions she has had to make since taking office. While I accept the inevitability of the early release scheme, what conversations has she had with ministerial colleagues on improving victim support for those who have seen perpetrators return to the community earlier than they were perhaps mentally prepared for, so as to reduce harm as far as possible?
Shabana Mahmood
I can assure my hon. Friend that my ministerial team and I have been working closely with our colleagues, primarily in the Home Office, but also across Government. Support for victims sits in different Departments, but we are making sure that we have a “one team” approach to this important matter. I have sought to pull the levers at my disposal in such a way that we gave the Probation Service the time it needed to prepare for the SDS40 changes. I did that because I wanted to ensure that our obligations under the victim notification scheme could be met. I am monitoring progress on that regularly, and I will ensure that any improvements required are made on a continual basis. We keep this under constant review.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Neil Foden is in prison for the sexual abuse of four vulnerable schoolchildren. He was the headteacher and strategic headteacher at two secondary schools in Gwynedd. Foden was convicted of 19 charges and sentenced to 17 years in July this year for his abhorrent crimes. The judge said he showed no remorse. Can the Lord Chancellor advise me how to seek assurance for his victims that Foden will not be released until he has served at least two thirds of his sentence?
Shabana Mahmood
I can confirm that all sex offences of all types are excluded from the SDS40 measures.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Ind)
I very much welcome the Lord Chancellor’s sentencing review, but on immediate systemic issues, privately run Forest Bank prison in Salford is at 138% capacity, with continued reports over the years of high levels of violence and insufficient rehabilitative training for prisoners. The contract runs out in January. Can the Secretary of State confirm who will be running the prison after that date? Will she be bringing it back under state control? What measures is she taking to urgently ensure safety in the prison and adequate rehabilitative training?
Shabana Mahmood
I will not pre-empt any future decisions on any particular prison, but I am not ideological about whether a prison is run by the state or privately. There are good prisons of both types in the sector. There are some failing state-run prisons and some failing privately run prisons. The most important thing is that we get on top of the capacity crisis across the whole prison estate. We have to reduce overcrowding so that we can focus on the good-quality rehabilitation activity that I know governors in every type of prison want to ensure, so that prisoners can be helped to turn their life around.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on recognising that for some prisoners, the shortcomings of short sentences are properly remedied by providing for longer ones. On the review and David Gauke, it is difficult not to like him and even admire him, but I am not alone in regarding him as a notorious wet, am I?
Shabana Mahmood
I will leave those characterisations to the internal workings of the Conservative party. I consider David Gauke to be a person with deep expertise in this area. He is a former Lord Chancellor who knows this territory very well. He will be able to hit the ground running, and I know that he will go where the evidence takes him.
Mike Amesbury (Runcorn and Helsby) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor referred to successful work in Texas. If we adopt such a model over here, how will victims be involved in shaping that tough rehabilitation approach?
Shabana Mahmood
We will make sure that the review panel, when it is fully put together, includes somebody with experience of working with victims of crime to make sure that that perspective is fully reflected in the investigations that the review undertakes and, ultimately, in its findings and recommendations.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
May I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on the terms of reference of this review, and the appointment of the excellent David Gauke? I remain concerned, however, about the Government’s evident enthusiasm for increasing capacity. May I ask the Lord Chancellor directly whether she agrees with her colleague in the other place that we imprison too many people in this country? Is the Lord Chancellor’s ultimate aim to reduce the prison population?
Shabana Mahmood
We need to make sure that we have the prison places we need to lock up those who have to be locked up. That is fundamentally non-negotiable. We have to see an increase in prison capacity. I mentioned earlier that the previous Government failed to deliver 14,000 places. Without them, we will run out of prison places again. We have to build the supply, and we have to do better on reoffending. All these things are equally important, and they all have to be done at the same time. I will not set arbitrary figures for how many people can and should go to prison. I want to ensure that we never again run out of prison places, that we do better on rehabilitation and that we expand punishment outside prison.
Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I welcome the announcement of the bipartisan sentencing review panel and thank my right hon. Friend for her continuing work to fix the mess of the last 14 years in this Department. The evidence shows that 55% of adults on short sentences go on to reoffend, while community orders have a 34% reoffending rate. Can she assure me that the panel will consider that as part of its remit?
Shabana Mahmood
That is exactly the sort of area that the panel will review. Although the reoffending rates for community orders are lower, they are still far too high. I am sure that the sentencing panel will want to consider how to bring all the numbers down so that we can ensure we are rehabilitating more people and ultimately cutting crime.
Dr Beccy Cooper (Worthing West) (Lab)
In 2021, the Justice Committee highlighted the fact that too many offenders were imprisoned because community orders with mental health requirements were unavailable in many areas across the country. Does the Lord Chancellor agree that we must now work across the health and justice systems to ensure that adequate provision is available in this essential area?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I can assure her that I will work closely with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to make sure that there is join-up across Government and that we do everything we can to reduce reoffending, rehabilitate more people and ultimately cut crime.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, particularly her preference for the deportation of foreign criminals and her comments that for hyper-prolific offenders, a particular problem in my constituency, longer sentences may be best. Whatever the outcome of the review, can she commit that dangerous criminals who pose a threat to the public, in Hartlepool or anywhere else, will always be locked up under this Government?
Shabana Mahmood
Yes, I absolutely can. The whole point of the review is to ensure that the country is never again in a position in which we might run out of prison places, and to ensure that those who must be locked up to keep the public safe will always be locked up.
Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
Keeping a prisoner in prison costs the taxpayer over £50,000 a year, whereas punishing the prisoner out of prison costs less than £5,000 a year. What is more, the prisoner is then far less likely to reoffend. Does the Secretary of State agree that taxpayers’ money would be better spent on having a much cheaper and better alternative to prison?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend makes a really important point about the relative costs of imprisonment and of punishment out of prison. Delivering the 14,000 prison places that the previous Government failed to deliver is a big cost, but it will be met by this Government. We must also ensure that we expand punishment out of prison. All options must be pursued if we are to get to grips with this crisis.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I am not given to hyperbole; I will simply say that my right hon. Friend has inherited a shocking and dangerous situation and is dealing with it in a calm and collected manner. I applaud and support the move to a more sensible and sustainable policy on sentencing, but will she assure my constituents in Rugby that we will always lock up violent and dangerous offenders where necessary to keep the public safe?
Shabana Mahmood
Let me assure my hon. Friend that the answer to his question is yes and yes. Part of the reason for doing the review is to ensure that this country is never again on the brink of running out of prison places, and that dangerous offenders who need to be locked up to keep the public safe will always be locked up.
Lauren Edwards (Rochester and Strood) (Lab)
I welcome the sentencing review and thank the Secretary of State for her explanation of why IPP sentences are not included in the review. What steps will she take to accelerate routes out of custody for prisoners serving IPP sentences, including a re-sentencing review that can be done without prejudice to public protection, to end an injustice once and for all and to increase capacity on our prison estate?
Shabana Mahmood
I hear the point my hon. Friend makes, and she makes it very well. We are not considering a re-sentencing exercise for IPP prisoners, because that would automatically release a number of people who we do not believe it would be safe to release. I am not willing to compromise public protection. I know that there is a huge injustice at the heart of these issues and that IPP sentences have rightly been abolished, but we have a problem with the cohort, in particular those under an IPP sentence who have never been released at all. I am determined to make more progress, wherever it is possible to do so safely, on releasing more IPP prisoners, but never in a way that compromises public protection.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to cross-party working, transparency and rebuilding public trust. Does she agree that this is a significant departure from the previous Government, who released over 10,000 prisoners not in the open but in secret?
Shabana Mahmood
I agree. My hon. Friend is right to remind the House of the last Conservative Government’s end of custody supervised licence scheme, for which we, in the end, had to release the numbers. Over 10,000 offenders were released under that scheme, without transparency and without the same exemptions that we have applied to the SDS40 changes.
Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)
What a mess we have inherited! I thank the Lord Chancellor for the steps that she has taken today to sort it out. We know that offenders who are subject to home detention orders are 50% less likely to reoffend, but can we put them to work as well during unpaid work sessions? Can we ensure that offenders who commit further offences while on licence are dealt with more robustly in the courts as they are recalled to prison?
Shabana Mahmood
My hon. Friend raises really important points about how we break the cycle of recalls to prison and ensure that licence conditions are abided by, and about the scope for putting more offenders to work. I am sure that these will be matters of great interest to the sentencing review panel. I look forward to seeing its findings in due course.
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)
The past 14 years have shown that Governments ignore the prison estate at their peril. My right hon. Friend rightly says that we must redesign punishment outside the secure estate. Will she elaborate on how offenders will have their liberty curtailed and how the public will be made aware of that liberty being taken away?
Shabana Mahmood
The modern world, with different technology, presents the best possible opportunity for us to expand the use of punishment out of prison, but in a way that gives the public confidence that offenders are being supervised, that the eyes of the state remain on them and that their behaviour and their liberty are effectively curtailed. I expect that new technology, as well as current available technology, will be of great interest to the review panel. I look forward to its findings when it reports in the spring.
Bill Presented
Trade Agreements (Exclusion of National Health Services) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Seamus Logan, supported by Stephen Flynn, Pete Wishart, Kirsty Blackman, Dave Doogan, Stephen Gethins, Chris Law, Graham Leadbitter, Brendan O’Hara, Claire Hanna and Ben Lake, presented a Bill to exclude requirements relating to National Health Services procurement, delivery or commissioning from international trade agreements; to require the consent of the House of Commons and the devolved legislatures to international trade agreements insofar as they relate to the National Health Services of England, Scotland and Wales and Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 January 2025, and to be printed (Bill 109).
Vehicle Registration Documents (Sale of Vehicle) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Richard Holden presented a Bill to require a seller of a vehicle to record their home address or specified information about a company that owns the vehicle in the vehicle’s registration document; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 28 March 2025, and to be printed (Bill 107).
Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Joe Morris presented a Bill to make provision changing the law about the offence of livestock worrying, including changes to what constitutes an offence and increased powers for investigation of suspected offences; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 25 April 2025, and to be printed (Bill 52).