Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Edward Argar]

I followed it closely.

[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.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[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).

Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity Package

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

As I informed the House earlier today, this Government inherited a prison system at the point of crisis. Prior to September, the adult male prison estate was running at over 99% capacity for 18 months, and the system was at risk of imminent collapse, with grave consequences for public safety and the whole criminal justice system.

In July we made the difficult but necessary decision to introduce a temporary change in the law to reduce the eligible standard determinate sentence release point from 50% to 40% (SDS40), with the second tranche of releases being implemented today. There are important offence exclusions for serious violent offences with a sentence of four years or more, sex offences, and certain domestic abuse-connected offences, and a commitment to review the change in 18 months. This decision was not taken lightly, but we are clear that this was the safest way forward given the scale of the emergency facing our prisons.

SDS40 bought us valuable time, which has ensured that we could keep sending criminals to prison, protect the public and make prisons safer for hard-working staff. We have already ended the previous Government’s “end of custody supervised licence” scheme, which released over 10,000 offenders early, often with very little warning to probation officers, placing them under enormous strain. We have also deactivated Operation Safeguard, which saw cells in police custody suites made available to hold prisoners temporarily when reception prisons did not have space to accept new prisoners. The headroom created by SDS40 enabled us to increase magistrates courts’ sentencing powers—from six to 12 months’ maximum custodial for a single triable either-way offence—in order to bear down on our large remand population. This measure will also help reduce the Crown court backlog. However, SDS40 was not a permanent solution, and we must now turn our attention to implementing a sustainable solution to the population crisis.

New prison places will continue to form a key part of our solution. We are committed to continuing the prison build programme that the last Government promised but did not deliver, building 14,000 places through the construction of a further four new prisons, as well as the expansion and refurbishment of the existing estate. We will also publish a 10-year capacity strategy later this year, which will set out our long-term plan for the prison estate, including streamlining the planning process.

However, we cannot build our way out of this crisis. The prison population is rising by around 4,500 each year. The current level of demand would see us need to build three mega-jails a year. The last Conservative Government managed to build three prisons in the last 10 years. However fast we build, increasing demand will outstrip supply. While there will always be a place for prison to punish offenders and keep the public safe, we must therefore review our sentencing framework, ensuring we never run out of prison places again.

We have therefore today commissioned an independent review of sentencing, which will deliver on the Government’s manifesto commitment to bring sentencing up to date. It has a clear objective to re-evaluate the sentencing framework to ensure that this Government are never again in a position where we are forced into the emergency release of prisoners. To ensure an effective and coherent justice system, the sentencing review will be guided by three principles:

First, sentences must punish offenders and protect the public, and there must always be space in prison for dangerous offenders;

Secondly, sentences must encourage offenders to turn their backs on a life of crime; and

Thirdly, we must expand the use of punishment outside of prison. In doing so, the review will look at how technology can support the administration of sentences outside of prison.

This will be chaired by the former Lord Chancellor, the right hon. David Gauke, supported by a panel that will include judicial expertise and expertise from across the justice system.

After the violent disorder, we came dangerously close to a disaster. Without action, we would have faced the prospect of a total breakdown of law and order. As a result, pressure on the system has increased, and so we must implement further urgent measures that will ensure the prison system avoids collapse before the sentencing review concludes and we can implement its recommendations. We will take a transparent approach that is proportionate to the levels of pressures seen, and this will not mean any further emergency releases.

We will:

Extend the maximum curfew period that offenders can spend on home detention curfew (HDC) from six to 12 months, meaning that those released on HDC will spend less time in prison and longer in the community subject to electronically monitored curfew.

Change the policy of risk-assessed recall review (RARR) to enable its use in a greater number of low-risk cases than at present to target the unsustainable growth in the recall population.

Work with the Home Office to identify further ways to speed up the removal of foreign national offenders from prison.

The measures on HDC and recall reform will make greater requirements of the probation service. In addition to our commitment to fund at least 1,000 additional trainee probation officers by the end of March 2025, HM Prison and Probation Service will also be considering what operational changes may be required in order to maintain a focus on higher-risk individuals supervised in the community and ensure that the public continue to be protected.

We are extremely grateful for the ongoing support shown by all those working in the criminal justice system, who have worked tirelessly to keep the system from collapsing. This Government will always put the country and its safety first and will take steps so the prison system is never allowed to reach this point again.

[HCWS156]

Criminal Justice System: Capacity

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on capacity in the criminal justice system. When this Government came to power, we inherited prisons on the brink of disaster, moments from total collapse. Had that happened, the consequences would have been apocalyptic: courts would have been forced to cancel all trials, the police would have been barred from making arrests, and we would have faced the total breakdown of law and order.

The last Government knew what had to be done. My predecessor, the former Lord Chancellor, begged his Prime Minister to act, but rather than have the bravery to do so, the now Leader of the Opposition chose to call an election instead. As a result, it fell to this Government to take the necessary but difficult action. While they say that to govern is to choose, my predecessors left me with no choice at all.

On 18 July, just two weeks into the job, I announced to this House that we had been forced to bring forward the release dates of some prisoners serving standard determinate sentences from 50% of time served in prison to 40%, serving the rest on their sentence on licence in the community. Make no mistake: the action we took prevented the immediate collapse of law and order in our country, but with our prison population still rising fast, there is more that we must do to address the capacity challenges our prisons face, and our task now is to ensure that a crisis like the one we inherited can never happen again.

Today, I can set out a measure that will begin to address a specific and acute cause of our prisons capacity crisis: the remand population. As this House will know, prisoners on remand are in our jails but have not yet been tried or sentenced. Because of the historical backlog in our Crown courts—another element of the woeful inheritance my predecessors handed to me—the remand population in prisons has soared. Today, it stands at a record 17,000, which is nearly one in every five prisoners. As some Members will know, remand prisoners are an especially acute problem as they are placed in so-called reception or category B prisons. Until they are tried and sentenced, they cannot be moved elsewhere in the estate. It is in our reception prisons that we face the most acute capacity pressure in the country. Unless we address our remand population, we could still see a collapse of the system, not because of a lack of cells, but because we do not have those cells in the places we need them. It is therefore crucial that we bear down on the remand population.

Magistrates courts have sentencing powers for only up to six months’ imprisonment for a single triable either-way offence, and only the Crown court can hand down sentences beyond that. Between May 2022 and March 2023, the previous Government chose to extend magistrates court sentencing powers to 12 months. This enabled magistrates courts to retain more sentencing hearings and meant that they were heard more quickly. It also freed up capacity in the Crown court to hear more complex cases. However, magistrates’ sentencing powers were then reduced back to six months when, having failed to address the capacity crisis in our prisons, the pressure on prison places became too great.

This Government have now acted to relieve that pressure, so I can announce that we will extend magistrates’ sentencing powers back to 12 months’ imprisonment. On 28 October, I will lay a statutory instrument to that effect, which will come into force on 18 November this year. This change does not increase the maximum sentence for specific offences, and nor does it change the length of sentence that a defendant will serve. Instead, it expands which courts can hand down sentences of six to 12 months’ imprisonment for a single triable either-way offence. It will enable the system to make more use of magistrates, who are an integral part of our court system, delivering justice swiftly across the country.

This measure will also allow us to begin to address the remand problem in our prisons, but it will do more than that. This Government inherited a record Crown court backlog. Waits for trials have grown so long that some cases are not heard for years. The impact on victims of crime is profound. For some, justice delayed is, as the old saying goes, justice denied, as victims choose to withdraw from the justice process altogether rather than face the pain of a protracted legal battle. By extending magistrates’ powers, we will be able to make progress on addressing the Crown court backlog, and we will free the Crown court to take on more of the cases that only it can hear. This measure is expected to free up an equivalent of 2,000 sitting days within the Crown court each year, which will add capacity on top of the additional 500 sitting days that this Government funded on taking office.

This measure will, in total, see a slight increase in the overall prison population, but by bearing down on the remand population in our reception prisons, we will create capacity where we need it most. This measure allows us to manage our prison population smartly, and it means we can both address our prisons crisis and tackle the courts backlog.

When this Government came to power, we inherited a justice system in crisis. We took immediate action to avert a total breakdown of law and order. We are now beginning the work of ensuring that this country never faces this crisis again. There will be more that we must do. In the coming weeks, I will return to the House and set out our long-term plan for the justice system, but these new powers for magistrates mark an important step. They help us alleviate the capacity pressures caused by the historical remand population that we inherited, and begin to address the record Crown court backlog that my predecessors handed to me. In so doing, for victims across the country they will make justice swifter, and ensure that more criminals receive the punishment that they deserve. I commend this statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor and her civil servants for their typical courtesy in giving me early sight of her statement. I am also grateful to magistrates, to whom I pay tribute. In many ways, they are the backbone of our justice system, and like juries they root our justice system in our local communities. Their service is hugely appreciated, as is the work of the Magistrates’ Association, and I recognise their skill and dedication.

The Lord Chancellor highlighted the backlog as context. As she will know, in 2010 the backlog that we inherited in the Crown courts was 48,000. It was reduced to 40,000 by 2019, but we recognise that it is a lot higher now. The change? A pandemic. She rightly referred to significant increases in the remand population. During the pandemic, supported by the then Opposition, we opted not to mass-release prisoners, as other countries did, and not to cancel jury trials. That of course led to increases in the remand population, compounded by the effect of the Bar strike.

The vast bulk of the backlog is in the Crown courts, as the Lord Chancellor will know, and it is right to recognise the interrelationship between magistrates courts and Crown courts. I believe that the concordat on sitting days had not been formally signed by the former Lord Chancellor at the time of the election, and I therefore saw with concern that, in stark contrast to previous Lord Chancellors who increased sitting days, it appears we will see a reduction of 2,700 sitting days compared with last year. I would be grateful for the Lord Chancellor’s reflections on that. In 2019 there were 85,000 sitting days, and 107,700 last year. This year the cap appears to be at 105,000. That appears to be the Government’s choice, but I would welcome clarity from the Lord Chancellor on that.

The changes that the Lord Chancellor has set out were characterised by the chair of the Criminal Bar Association, Mary Prior KC, in The Guardian:

“This is a knee-jerk reaction, done without consulting—once again—the criminal barristers or solicitors who deal every day with these cases”.

There are therefore a number of questions about that and the broader criminal justice system, given the scope of the right hon. Lady’s statement, which I hope she will be able to answer. Has she conducted a complete impact assessment for the changes, and will she publish that and all the modelling on it prior to the statutory instrument being laid? How many people are currently on remand, and will she share with the House the latest, most up-to-date figure? Reports suggest that this measure will in the short term potentially increase pressure on prison places, so will she say by what amount her modelling suggests that will be? What prior consultation did she or her Department undertake with the Criminal Bar Association, the Bar Council and the Law Society before making this decision? What assessment has she made of the impact of the decision announced today on the backlog and on the number of short custodial sentence passed by the courts?

Given that the right hon. Lady explicitly referred to her prisoner early release scheme, I hope she will be able to answer all those questions, but there is also one important question that I hope she will answer today by way of reassurance: are any of the 37 prisoners released in error last month still roaming free, or have they all been safely returned to prison? I would be grateful for clarification on that, because it is important.

We will find out in under two weeks whether, in pre-Budget spending discussions with the Chancellor, the right hon. Lady has successfully fought for investment and in the interests of justice and victims of crime, or whether she has sold out the victims and the systems, and conceded cuts to the Treasury. If she has succeeded in securing additional investment, she will have my gratitude and support. If she has not, we will rightly hold her to account.

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is almost as if the shadow Lord Chancellor was not, in fact, a Minister in the Ministry of Justice just a few short months ago. Let me remind him of a few salient facts. First, on Crown court sitting days, I will not accept any suggestion or allegation from him that this Government have cut sitting days or trials in the Crown court. That is entirely untrue. As he knows, or ought to know, perfectly well—I am sure he can check with the former Lord Chancellor—on 28 June, the last Government and the last Lord Chancellor determined how many days the judges could sit this year. Since then, this Government have increased the number of sitting days by 500. As there is clearly some confusion here, it is important that I set the record straight.

Every year, the Government and the judiciary agree a number of sitting days, and an overall budget to fund those sitting days, in what is known as the concordat process. In June, the judiciary reached an agreement with the former Lord Chancellor to sit 106,000 days in the Crown court, with a total budget of £275 million. It has become clear that there has been over-listing against that budget, with more trials scheduled than the funding allowed for. As a result, some cases have had to be delisted, although far fewer than some recent reporting has suggested—it was claimed that around 5,000 sitting days were being cancelled, and I know that the shadow Lord Chancellor had some other numbers in his remarks. In fact, as I understand it, the number is more like 1,600 sitting days. Although misleading reports have abounded, one thing is clear: the concordat process has not worked as it should. I can assure the House that the first concordat process on my watch will be very different, and such confusions will not occur again.

The shadow Lord Chancellor asked a number of questions relating to the impact assessment for the changes announced today. I will publish all the usual impact assessments when the statutory instrument is published. As I said in my opening remarks, we expect an initial impact on prison places, but over time we expect that to come down. We have a little more space in prisons because of the action we have taken to stabilise the pressure on prison places. It is a sensible measure to then take the opportunity to bear down on the Crown court backlog by providing the extra 2,000 sitting days that this change will allow, while also bearing down further on our remand population.

As the shadow Lord Chancellor will know, the exact numbers are difficult to model because listing is a matter for the judiciary. Some of those on remand will ultimately be found not guilty and some will be found guilty and sentenced, and the whole range of sentencing measures is available to the independent judiciary. But we expect to make some progress on the remand population and, crucially, to be able to move people from the reception estate into the rest of the prison estate, thereby helping us to make sure we have the prison places where we need them. I can also confirm that all of the 37 people released in error because of being incorrectly sentenced are now back in custody.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

As someone who spent a decade shadowing and scrutinising the previous Government’s justice policies, I sympathise with the Lord Chancellor over the chaos she has inherited, but the proposed changes to magistrates’ sentencing powers may have mixed results. They should ease the backlog in the Crown court, but they may put additional pressure on our overcrowded prisons. My concern is that we do not have robust data on the Crown court backlog or on the effects of varying sentencing. The Government are about to embark on a quick but thorough review of sentencing. Will they use that opportunity to get the policy and the figures lined up?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I think this is my first chance in the House to welcome my hon. Friend to his new position as Chair of the Justice Committee. Let me deal with Crown court data first. In fairness to the previous Government, they discovered this error prior to the conclusion of their term in office. When I came in, I was made aware of the issue with Crown court data. I ordered further investigation and examination of the issues. It is clear that a number of problems with the data—a number of errors and other issues—need to be resolved. We will make sure that it is published when we can be sure that it is accurate and that all those errors have been finally resolved.

Clearly, the situation is unacceptable. I am in discussion with the Lady Chief Justice about the need for a full external audit of Crown court data, because I think we can all agree that that data must be accurate. We clearly must do more to restore confidence in the reporting process, and I will update the House further in due course.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Just for reference, your questions should be two minutes, no longer.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for his questions. I am very aware of the number of places in our prison estate, and we had a particularly difficult moment before the last bank holiday, in August, when we came down to fewer than 100. However, as a result of the measures we have taken on SDS40, there is now some space and some capacity in our prison system. It is important that we use this opportunity also to bear down on the remand population and to deal with the Crown court backlog.

This is a delicate balancing exercise, and it is one that I will personally be keeping a close eye on and keeping under review. However, I think that the measure we have announced is ultimately the right one, because it helps us with our prison capacity challenges. As a result, we will have the prison places where we need them—in the reception prisons—and we can start moving people out to other parts of the estate, which is not possible until cases are heard. I am confident that we have the capacity in the magistrates courts to deal with the additional workload. Again, I will be keeping that under review.

The hon. Member is right: 80% of offenders are actually reoffenders. This country has a real problem with failing to rehabilitate offenders, and our record on reducing reoffending is not as strong as it should be. Prison has a place, and it is really important that people who break our laws are properly punished. That is necessary for the public to maintain confidence in our system and for law-abiding citizens to feel that there are consequences when our laws are broken. There is no doubt in my mind that punishment and prison are important, but they go hand in hand with rehabilitation. I do not think there is a choice to be made between punishment and rehabilitation—they are two sides of the same coin, and we have to have both. This Government are determined to have a better track record on both punishment and rehabilitation compared with anything that has gone on in the previous 14 years.

Let me gently say that it is not the case that magistrates courts send more people to prison. Following the previous change the courts were able to run through cases faster, and because the previous Government had not created capacity in the prison estate, the pressure on prison places became acute and the measure had to be dropped back to six months—the shadow Lord Chancellor might wish to offer further comments on that. That is what happened and what I expect to happen again.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is fascinating and powerful to hear the plans to deal with the backlog in the courts. I know that all our constituents will be grateful for the Lord Chancellor’s work. I have a constituent who was the victim of an aggravated burglary that involved multiple men coming to her house with machetes in 2021. Finally, last week at Snaresbrook Crown court, a date for the trial of the gentlemen accused of this crime was set for October 2026. The Lord Chancellor will recognise and share the concern of my constituent. As she says, justice delayed is justice denied. What comfort can she give my constituent that such matters will be expedited as a result of her work?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am very sorry to hear about the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent. I have many such instances of unacceptable delays for hearing cases in my own constituency caseload. I hope that the measures that I have announced today will begin to ease some of that pressure, because making this change will free up around 2,000 sitting days in the Crown court. This Government have funded an additional 500 beyond the concordat process agreement that was reached by the previous Government in June. I am determined to make more progress in dealing with the Crown court backlog so that constituents such as my hon. Friend’s do not have to wait so many years for their cases to be heard and, ultimately, for justice to be done.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I reach out across the party divide to say that I warmly welcome what the Justice Secretary said about punishment and rehabilitation? By coincidence, I have just written to her—she will not have seen the letter yet—about the work of my constituent, the publisher Andrew Duncan, in co-ordination with a panel of experts that includes a psychology professor, a former governor of Pentonville, a Probation Service specialist in reducing reoffending and a central London magistrate, on a new concept of community detention. My request is that either she or the Minister she thinks most appropriate will agree to have a meeting with my constituent, a few members of his team and me. As a right-of-centre politician, I am sometimes sceptical of alternatives to prison. This one sounds really interesting, and I think it would not be a waste of her time.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the right hon. Member for the spirit in which he made his remarks. I hope that where consensus is possible on a cross-party basis across this House, we are able to work together, because this is a national problem that will require us all to come together to solve it. I will track down his letter and ensure that he gets a full response and a meeting.

[Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)]

In Shropshire, the justice system is broken. Under the watch of the last Conservative Government, the remand court in Shropshire magistrates court was closed and transferred to Kidderminster. I am delighted to say that, under this Government’s watch, that remand court is about to reopen. Some 300 court sessions are running empty each and every year at Shropshire magistrates court. My local paper, the Shropshire Star, highlighted a criminal trial—it involved a retrial—that will take seven years from the original date of the offence to be disposed of, which is an absolute disgrace. Will the Lord Chancellor look at ways in which we can further empower district judges in the magistrates court, and at the use of technology in the justice system? Finally, it is important that the transparency around data is fixed. Unfortunately, the last Conservative Government did not release the data on time. We need to understand what is really going on now, and what has happened in the past.

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Cases are taking too long to reach conclusion in our courts. We are making some changes, and I am considering what further ones we will need to make. There is an important piece around efficiency and productivity in the court system, and there have also been reports by Lord Justice Auld, Lord Leveson and others on other ways to speed up trials being heard. All those options are on the table, and I will update the House in due course about this Government’s approach.

I simply reiterate my remarks on the data: when it is finally published, it is important that we can be certain that it is accurate and properly captures what is going on in our Crown courts and that we can all have confidence in it. In fairness, the last Government did pick up on this problem. I am determined that it will be resolved and that the data will ultimately be published.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her very welcome statement. There is a clear commitment to the change that is necessary. She will note that I nearly always focus on victims, so will she outline what weight is given to victim impact statements, and whether there is a need to determine in law how much weight is given to the impact on devastated families? I always think of the devastated families—they are the ones who are really important.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me reassure the hon. Member that we place great importance in the victim’s experience. This Government will strengthen that further and ensure that victims are not further traumatised by their experience of seeking justice. Victim impact statements have an important role to play. The victims Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), recently met Victim Support and other groups. This is a really important piece of work for the Government, and I know the hon. Member will hold us to account on our track record. I am very aware of the impact of delays in the system on victims, which is why we are making the changes today. We will make more progress to bring those delays down.

[Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Lord Chancellor and her Department for their important work in tackling the backlog. Given that the previous Government agreed the funding allocation, who does she feel is responsible for the number of Crown court sitting days being cut? Has she explored the further use of artificial intelligence in small judgments to speed up the backlog?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I reiterate my previous remarks on what has happened to Crown court sitting days, but I do not think it is helpful for me to speculate on who is ultimately responsible. It is clear that the concordat process has not worked as it should. As I said, the first process that I conduct as Lord Chancellor will not have those issues. An agreement was reached and it has to be stuck to. I am sure that all those in the system are worried about the impact on victims—they are the ones who will be waiting longer. As I said, although reports have suggested that up to 5,000 sitting days have been cancelled, the number is more like 1,600, and the changes we have announced today will free up capacity in the Crown courts.

I am very interested in the role that AI and other technology and digital solutions can play in increasing efficiency and productivity in the Crown court system and the court system more broadly. That is subject to discussions in relation to the Budget and the spending review. I hope to update the House in due course.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I am very concerned to hear of the missed publication of Crown court backlog data. How can we hope to drive down the backlog if we do not know how big it is?

[Shabana Mahmood]

One of the reasons why I am determined to get to the bottom of what has gone wrong, and to ensure that all errors and accuracy issues are dealt with, is so that we have comprehensive data that we can rely upon. We know that the Crown court backlog is at historic levels. Sadly, I do not think that any assurance work on the data will suddenly bring that down—I suspect it is more likely to go up—but it is important to establish the true scale of that backlog, because this House needs to know exactly what it looks like so that it can hold the Government to account on their efforts to bring it down. We cannot do that unless we know its exact size. Sadly, I suspect it will remain at the historic levels that we have inherited—I do not think it will come down by much.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

I thank the Lord Chancellor very much for her statement. It is very clear, from everything we have seen over the past 14 years and since 4 July, that the previous Government completely failed to manage our prison estate. Does she agree with me and my constituents that it is really important that we maintain space in our prison system to lock up the most dangerous offenders? At the same time, we need to have a look at community sentences. Will she be doing that?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There must always be space in our prisons to lock up the most dangerous offenders. We must always place public protection above all other considerations when it comes to dangerous violent offenders. When we have a capacity crisis as acute as the one I inherited, we unfortunately have to also consider alternatives, simply because running out of space is no option at all. I reiterate the remarks I made earlier: punishment and rehabilitation have to go together. It is not a choice between one or the other. They are two sides of the same coin and the Government are determined to make progress on both.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

My constituents will welcome the clarity that the Lord Chancellor has provided today. With reference to her point about the long-term plan for the justice system, a plan that we have to get right, may I ask her to keep in mind the need for a proper, robust and accessible legal aid system?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Legal aid underpins our system of justice and access to justice. Stabilising the situation in relation to legal aid is a key priority for the Government.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I have a number of prisons in my constituency, so I was particularly concerned to read about Serco’s failures on tagging. What is the Secretary of State doing to hold it to account?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Serco’s performance is unacceptable. We are having daily meetings with it to ensure it recovers the position. I have made it clear that improved performance is an absolutely priority. We are already imposing financial penalties, given its performance to date, and we will not hesitate to trigger relevant contractual penalties if it does not improve.

[Mr Alex Barros-Curtis (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement, and commend her and her ministerial team for the work they are doing to fix the last 14 years of Tory mess in this Department. In her statement, she talked about the withdrawal of victims from the process. On that point, 60% of rape victims are dropping out of their cases, partly because they are waiting years for justice. Will the Secretary of State explain how independent legal advocates will support victims to see their cases through to trial?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The introduction of independent legal advocates for rape victims will, we believe, ensure that the rights that victims already have will be enforced, and in such a way as to give them the confidence to continue with their cases. This is a key priority policy for our party and for the Government, and I will be very pleased to be able to roll it out over the coming months and years. It is a significant change to our legal system. It will be the first time that independent legal advice is given to a type of victim. We think that is incredibly important, because rape victims lose confidence in the process and are often re-traumatised by the process of seeking justice. The independent legal advocates will try to ensure that the scales of justice are rebalanced and that victims have a fair shot at having their already existing legal rights enforced.

[Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)]

Prisons have two vital functions: punishment and rehabilitation. Reoffending has gone up, because after 14 years under the Conservatives prisons have become colleges of crime. We need to get the basics right and we need to get the fundamentals right on prison education reform. Will my right hon. Friend look at how we can improve literacy and numeracy skills in our prison estate?

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood]

We will of course look at improved literacy and other skills within our prison estate. The problem with running a prison estate as hot as the previous Government did, and so full to the brim, is that when we are so badly overcrowded and prisoners are locked up for 23 hours every day, there is very little other work we can do to help prisoners rehabilitate. Dealing with the capacity crisis will enable us to have a better performance and better track record on rehabilitation, which is crucial if we are ultimately to reduce the number of victims in future and cut crime.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that failing to address the prisons capacity crisis and allowing the Crown court backlog to grow to unprecedented levels has meant that the entirety of our criminal justice system has been broken? I make particular reference to rape and serious sexual offences cases.

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is clear that the position I have inherited from my predecessors was shocking and completely unacceptable. We were, simply, one bad day away from total disaster in our criminal justice system. That is why, since we formed the Government, we have been making the difficult choices necessary to stabilise our criminal justice system and stabilise the situation in our prisons, so we can restore the system to one that the public can rightly have confidence in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Ranger (Wrexham) (Lab)]

16. What steps her Department is taking to increase prison capacity.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

Today is the day that those on the Opposition Benches always knew was coming. The legacy of the previous Government was a prison system on the brink of collapse, which left us with no choice. Today, around 1,700 offenders have had to be released a few weeks or months early by changing their automatic release point from 50% to 40% of their sentence. Had we not done so, we faced courts unable to hold trials, police unable to make arrests and a total breakdown of law and order. This is not the long-term solution—there is more that we must do—but it was the necessary first step that we had to take following the disgraceful dereliction of duty of the previous Government.

[Dan Carden]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. One way to reduce pressure on numbers is to treat more offenders with drug and alcohol addictions outside the prison estate. That reduces prisoner numbers and reduces reoffending, which means fewer victims and fewer people returning to prison. Such a system is operating successfully in many parts of the country, but it requires the highest quality treatment. It also requires probation to work well, otherwise magistrates are limited in their choices. May I encourage the Secretary of State to get hold of Dame Carol Black’s internal review of treatment and recovery of drug-dependent people in the secure estate if she has not already done so? I have not seen it, obviously, but I am certain that it will contain many excellent recommendations.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is right: good quality work on rehabilitation to reduce reoffending and deal with drug and alcohol issues is critical to dealing with not just the rehabilitation of offenders, but the prison system. He will know that nearly 80% of offending is reoffending, which is far too high. The situation at the moment is that it is impossible to do good-quality, rehabilitative work in prisons that are more than 99% full, with prisoners locked up for 23 hours a day, so the first step is to address capacity. Once we have done so, we will be able to build on recommendations made by experts in this area to make sure that we do everything we can to reduce reoffending.

[Andrew Ranger]

I thank the Secretary of State for her answer. My constituency of Wrexham is home to one of the UK’s largest prisons. It is well known that if an offender has fixed and secure accommodation to go to, they are less likely to reoffend. What steps is she taking to ensure that those released today under SDS40 will have accommodation on release, including in Wrexham?

[Shabana Mahmood]

We are working closely with colleagues from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to understand the impact on the housing sector, but, as is the case any time a prisoner is released, probation staff are working hard to prepare release plans, including permanent and temporary accommodation. If an offender is at risk of homelessness on release, they will be housed in community accommodation. We expect to provide housing for the majority of offenders using existing provision, but, should there not be enough, I have authorised probation directors to make use of alternative arrangements, including budget hotels, as a temporary measure for the cases that we will see in the next few weeks.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

During the debate on early prisoner release in July, the impact assessment produced suggested that there would be 5,500 fewer prison places than planned for because of the need to meet the capital savings that were discussed at the time. When I raised that with the Secretary of State, she said that this matter would be under review. Can she now confirm that it is the Government’s intention to cut back prison places by 5,500 over the medium and long term?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The right hon. Lady will know that I have committed to publishing a 10-year capacity strategy. There are also live discussions as part of the Budget and spending review process. We have committed to delivering the shortfall of 14,000 places in our prison system, which the previous Government failed to do. That is a commitment that we have given. Those conversations are live conversations and I will report to the House in due course, but we will publish that 10-year capacity strategy before the end of the year.

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

Can the Secretary of State explain why, when some 10,000 foreign criminals are blocking up space in our jails, they are not being removed and deported, which would simultaneously save the British taxpayer billions of pounds every year and have the support of millions of British voters?

[Shabana Mahmood]

They are being deported, and they will continue to be deported. Nothing will change as far as the deportation of foreign national offenders is concerned, but the inheritance we received from the previous Government meant we had to take additional measures. The answer will not come from the deportation of foreign national offenders alone, but it is very much part of the picture.

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

Under the early release scheme starting today, the detail of which was designed by the Secretary of State, how many people will be eligible to be released at the 40% point who have been sentenced, for example, for offences under section 20, grievous bodily harm, and section 47, actual bodily harm, of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, both of which carry a maximum sentence of five years, but for which more often a sentence will be awarded that is less than five years?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The shadow Lord Chancellor will know that we have made important exclusions in the design of the policy and that all those who have committed serious offences and have been sentenced to four years or more will be excluded from it. I will not be able to give details on the specific mix of offences per offender, but those offences that would otherwise be included, but that relate to serious violence or sexual offences, have been excluded from the policy.

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State, but I have the statutory instrument and the list of exclusions in the schedule here, and those offences are not specifically included in that list of exclusions. My fear is—and this would be deeply disappointing—that many domestic abusers who were convicted for those offences but received fewer than five years may be eligible for early release and be considered for it, because her scheme does not explicitly exclude those offences. Given that, the reality is that the Government’s claim that domestic abusers will not be eligible to benefit from the scheme will ring very hollow to victims of domestic abuse and the wider public, won’t it?

[Shabana Mahmood]

With respect to the shadow Lord Chancellor, what will ring hollow to members of the public is the Tory party’s new-found commitment to exclusions for domestic abuse, and the sheer hypocrisy of talking about exclusions to this policy when he was a Minister in the previous Government who brought in the end of custody supervised licence scheme, which had no exclusions relating to domestic abuse whatsoever—[Interruption.] He talks about the governor lock from a sedentary position, but he knows full well that that was an attempt to shift the blame away from ministerial decision making and to place it on governors—something I am not sure was much appreciated by those who run our prisons. We have taken every step and every mechanism available to us to exclude offences connected to domestic abuse and, crucially, to give the probation service time to prepare—something the previous Government never did.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)]

It is clear that our prisons are at breaking point. The Conservatives’ failure to tackle the courts backlog has directly contributed to prison overcrowding. Thanks to their neglect and mismanagement, the Government have been left with no choice but to take these measures. However, the Lord Chancellor said in her statement in July that these measures would be reviewed

“within 18 months of implementation—at the very latest, in March 2026.”—[Official Report, 25 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 833.]

That is a long time away, particularly given the various stories we are hearing about certain individuals being released. Will the Secretary of State once again confirm that no dangerous criminals will be released early?

[Shabana Mahmood]

We have taken every measure available to us to exclude offences from this measure. Serious violence, sexual violence and offences connected to domestic abuse have all been excluded, as have terror offences and so on—the hon. Gentleman will know the list of exclusions. We will work with our probation service, which has done a heroic amount of work over the summer to deliver this policy, in the coming months. We will also work very closely with criminal justice system partners to make sure that the roll-out of the scheme is as safe as possible. We have taken every measure, we will continue to keep matters under review and I will keep the House updated in due course.

[Mr Speaker]

We need to speed up a little. We are only now getting to Question 2.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)]

17. What assessment she has made of the impact of recent disorder on the criminal justice system.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

The criminal justice system rose to the challenge brought about by the violent disorder we saw over the summer. As of 22 August, 576 individuals have been brought before the courts. Of those, 123 have been given a custodial sentence by the Crown court.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

As a Crown prosecutor for 21 years, I know only too well that the court backlog has been worsened by repair issues forcing courts to close. What is the Secretary of State doing to address the repairs needed to the court estate, so that victims in my constituency of Amber Valley and across the country can get access to justice?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is of course crucial that courts are in a position where the building—the infrastructure itself—does not prevent them from being able to sit. It will be a priority for this Government to resolve those issues, so that cases can be heard and victims can be given the justice that they deserve.

[Alex Baker]

It is clear that we have come dangerously close to running out of prison places in the last few months, which as the Prime Minister has rightly said, is

“about as fundamental a failure as you can get”.

Who does the Lord Chancellor blame for this failure, and does she think we will ever get a word of apology from the Conservative party for leaving our prison estate on the brink of disaster?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I would happily give way to anybody on the Opposition Benches if they would like to take up the invitation to offer an apology, but I do not think one will be forthcoming. I certainly do think that one is required given the state of the prison system that we have inherited, but it is our job to make sure that that never happens again. That is why we will be launching a review into how the current position was allowed to come to pass. The Conservative party ignored all the warnings, putting political gain ahead of the country’s best interests, and it will fall to this Government to fix it.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

The Government have rightly found prison places for those involved in the recent disorder, but they have done that by continuing their early release policy. Will the Secretary of State confirm that those guilty of manslaughter are among those able to get early release, and will she explain to the House why people guilty of manslaughter should be released early?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I think the hon. Member is guilty of wilful ignorance. He will know full well that the prison system that we inherited was on the point of collapse. The fact that some prison build that was already in course was able to be brought on line a little earlier to help us get over the crisis of the summer is testament to the people working at the frontline to make sure that those prison spaces were available, but we are still short of prison capacity. Prisons are still at over 99% capacity, and that is the legacy left by his Government. He will know that we have important exclusions to the SDS40 policy, and he will know that the offence and the sentence are both taken into account. I will not give a running commentary on exactly which sentences and which offenders are affected, but he knows what exclusions are in place.

[Sarah Coombes (West Bromwich) (Lab)]

6. What steps her Department is taking to improve the experience of victims at court.

--- Later in debate ---

[Olivia Bailey (Reading West and Mid Berkshire) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

On taking office two months ago, it was immediately clear that we had inherited a prison system at the point of collapse. That is why our emergency action, which will see certain offenders leave prison a few weeks or months early, has proved necessary. The measure takes effect today. I pay tribute to the work of the Prison and Probation Service, which has gone above and beyond the call of duty both in responding to the violent disorder in recent weeks and in preparing for the introduction of those measures. This marks the beginning of a rescue effort—one that will, in time, allow us to rebuild and reform our justice system in the years ahead.

[Olivia Bailey]

After the last Government left our prisons on the brink of collapse, I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to building new prisons and driving down reoffending. I also welcome her commitment to additional transparency. Does she agree that such transparency is a significant departure from the approach of the previous Government, who released thousands of prisoners early in secret?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is a significant departure from the approach of the previous Government, who introduced an early release scheme—the end of custody supervised licence scheme—that operated under a veil of secrecy, with no data ever published on the numbers released. It took our Government to publish the data showing that more than 10,000 offenders were released under that scheme. I am pleased to say today that we have ended that scheme.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for her previous answers on substantive questions about accommodation for prisoners released early. Further to that, have the Government contracted any specific hotels for potential use by early release prisoners?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I have authorised probation directors in areas to make appropriate provision, if that proves to be needed—at this point, it is not definite that it will be required—to ensure that there is no gap in provision for offenders being released under the SDS40 scheme.

[Edward Argar]

I think the Secretary of State said that none has been contracted at this time. If they are at any point, further to the point made by the hon. Member for Reading West and Mid Berkshire (Olivia Bailey), will she be open and transparent with the House, local authorities and the public about how many, at what point and, in broad terms, where they will be located?

[Shabana Mahmood]

Yes, I will.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

T2. The Secretary of State has said that she will review her prisoner early release scheme after 18 months, but will she go further and commit to ending it then, and if not, to returning to this House for a fresh vote on it?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I have committed to the review, because that is the appropriate way, and I will not make early promises that might not be kept. I have committed to both transparency and a review. We will publish all the data on a quarterly basis and I will return to the House with the results of the review and the approach that we will take at that point.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

T5. The Minister will understand that, often for very personal reasons, victims of sexual assault, such as my constituent, do not always feel comfortable reporting their attack to the police. She then found it extremely difficult to access specialist support services at what was clearly a very distressing time. What can we do to improve the accessibility of support services for those victims of sexual assault who do not report it to the police? Will she meet me to discuss this case further?

--- Later in debate ---

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

T8. A significant proportion of the 1,700 prisoners being released early today, while having been convicted of other offences, have a history of domestic abuse. What reassurances can the Secretary of State give to domestic abuse victims who fear the release of their perpetrators today?

[Shabana Mahmood]

We have taken every measure available to us and pulled every lever we could to ensure that offences connected to domestic abuse are excluded and that the probation service has had time to prepare. We will work with it in the coming weeks and months to ensure that release plans are in place and victims are notified in the usual way.

[Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)]

A widow was prosecuted under the single justice procedure after her husband had passed away and the car tax expired. She was convicted over just £3.34, and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency sent the letter to the wrong address. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can reform the single justice procedure to make it more accountable and ensure that there is better oversight of the process?

--- Later in debate ---

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

My constituent was brave enough to report her husband for the abuse that he put her through. He has just been released from prison on two conditions: he would be tagged and he was not allowed to go into her village. He has not been tagged because the Probation Service says that it does not have enough tags and there is a technical fault, and he entered her village on his first day out of prison, staying overnight. He was on her street, and his family knocked on her door. Will the Secretary of State please respond to my letter about my constituent, who feels extremely vulnerable? Will she also confirm that there are enough tags, and that in cases such as this there will be not just a verbal warning—which is all that her husband received for his actions—but remedial repercussions?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am not aware of the correspondence to which the hon. Lady has referred, but I will chase it up and ensure that she receives a comprehensive response.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

The coronial system is a mess, with substantial backlogs, a lack of representation for bereaved families, and erratic use of prevention of future deaths reports. Will the Secretary of State consider reforms to deal with these problems? If she needs ideas, there is a very good report from the Justice Committee.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Catapults are not classed as offensive weapons, but they are being used increasingly in my constituency to injure and kill livestock and pets. Will the Minister responsible for such matters agree to meet me to discuss how we can deter these people and stop their use of catapults to kill?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I suspect that that may be a matter for my colleagues in the Home Office, but I will happily liaise with the relevant Minister and ensure that the hon. Lady receives a response.

Imprisonment for Public Protection: Changes to Licence

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

It is right that imprisonment for public protection sentences were abolished. We worked constructively in opposition to progress IPP reforms in the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, which represent sensible changes to help rehabilitated offenders serving the IPP sentence on licence in the community to move on from their sentence in a safe and sustainable way. That is why I wish to inform the House of my intention to bring into force the IPP measures in the Act.

Section 66 amends sections 31, 31A and 32 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, which provide for the termination of licence for those serving sentences of imprisonment or detention for public protection and setting their licence conditions. Section 67 requires the Secretary of State to prepare and publish an annual report about the steps taken to support the rehabilitation of IPP and DPP offenders and their progress towards release from prison or licence termination, and to lay the report before Parliament.

I am clear that, in commencing these reforms, public protection must come first. To ensure that HM Prison and Probation Service can effectively manage these changes, the measures will be commenced in a phased approach, starting on 1 November 2024 and with all measures commenced by 1 February 2025.

Phase 1 will commence on 1 November 2024, when sections 66 and 67 will come into force. This includes measures to:

Include a statutory presumption that the IPP licence will be terminated by the Parole Board at the end of the qualifying period. In practice, this will mean strong justification on public protection grounds would be needed not to terminate the licence; introduce a provision where an IPP licence will terminate automatically in cases where the Parole Board has not terminated the licence at the end of the qualifying period and where the offender has spent a further two continuous years on licence in the community—i.e. they have not been recalled to prison in that time.

Create a new power for the Secretary of State to release a recalled IPP offender—without the need for a release decision by the Parole Board—following a process known as risk assessed recall review.

Allow the Secretary of State to determine that, for the purposes of the two-year automatic licence termination period, the prisoner’s licence is treated as having remained in force as if it had not been revoked, where it is in the interests of justice to do so. This means that for an IPP or DPP offender released by the Parole Board or the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State can disapply the impact of the recall on the two-year automatic period which will not reset upon the prisoner’s re-release from prison.

Require the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament about the steps taken to progress those serving IPP sentences towards a safe release.

From 1 November 2024, the qualifying period will be two years for DPP offenders and three years for IPP offenders for the purpose of the automatic licence termination but will remain 10 years for other purposes.

Phase 2 will commence on 1 February 2025 where the qualifying period for all other purposes, including when the Secretary of State must refer a DPP or IPP licence to the Parole Board for consideration of licence termination, will be two and three years respectively.

I want to make progress towards a safe and sustainable release for those serving the IPP sentence, but not in a way that impacts public protection. Commencing these measures is the first step in doing so. I will continue to monitor progress in this area, and the Government plan to consult expert organisations to ensure that the right course of action is taken to support those serving IPP sentences.

[HCWS72]

Prison Workforce and Judiciary Pay Awards

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2024 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

I am today confirming the Government’s decision on pay awards for both prison staff and the judiciary.

Prison Service Pay Award 2024-25

Having carefully considered the 14 recommendations made by the Prison Service Pay Review Body for the 2024-25 pay award, I can announce that we are accepting in full the recommendations made by the PSPRB for all staff within its remit.

All Prison Service staff play a vital role in helping to rehabilitate prisoners and keep the public safe. I am grateful for their hard work and dedication. Acceptance of these recommendations reflects our priorities in ensuring the recruitment and retention of Prison Service staff to deliver this essential frontline service, and recognises the valuable service they deliver every day.

The award will deliver a pay rise of at least a 5% base pay increase for all prison staff between operational support grade and governors (bands 2-11), with a targeted focus on the lowest paid.

The award delivers headline pay increases of:

5% for prison officer grades (bands 3-5)

5% for managerial and prison governor grades (bands 7-12)

5% increase for operational support grades (band 2), in addition to the national living wage increase that band 2 staff received from 1 April 2024.

This pay award will be paid this autumn and will be backdated to 1 April 2024.

This Government value the vital contribution the almost 6 million public sector workers make across the UK, delivering the public services we all rely upon. Making this pay award will help to stabilise our Prison Service and ensure it can recruit and retain the staff it needs. It recognises the unwavering dedication of our prison staff, who have continued to protect the public amid the current prison capacity crisis.

I would like to thank the PSPRB for its valuable advice and response to the Government’s evidence.

The report has been laid before Parliament today. I am grateful to the chair and members of the review body for their report.

Judicial Pay Award 2024-25

I am today announcing my decision on pay for the judiciary.

The Government received the Senior Salaries Review Body report on 17 June 2024. This will be presented to Parliament and published on gov.uk.

The SSRB’s expertise and independent advice is invaluable in reaching a fair judicial pay award which reflects the judiciary’s crucial role at the heart of the justice system. However, the Government must take a balanced view, giving adequate consideration to fiscal responsibility. I have carefully considered the SSRB’s advice in making my decision.

The SSRB recommended a pay award of 6% for all judicial office holders within the remit group for 2024-25. I have decided to accept this recommendation in full. It will be applied equally to all judicial office holders for whom I have responsibility and will be backdated to April 2024.

I recognise the SSRB’s concerns regarding persistent recruitment and retention issues affecting parts of the judiciary. I look forward to working alongside the judiciary to understand how we can start to address these shortfalls through system-wide reforms.

I hope this increase demonstrates the value that I and the Government place on our independent judiciary and their unwavering commitment to the delivery of justice and the rule of law.

[HCWS38]

Criminal Law

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 17 July, be approved.

Following my announcement on Friday 12 July and an oral statement to the House last Thursday, Members will know that our prisons are in crisis. The male prison estate has been running at around 99% capacity for 18 months. We now know that my predecessor warned 10 Downing Street of the perils of inaction, but rather than addressing the crisis, the former Prime Minister called an election and left us a time bomb, ticking away.

If we do not act now, and that bomb goes off, our prisons will reach full capacity and the justice system will grind to a halt. The courts would have to stop holding trials and the police would be unable to make arrests. With criminals free to act without consequence, the public would be put at risk. If we do not act now, this nightmare will become reality by September.

We have explored all the options available to us. In the precious little time we have, we cannot build more prisons or add more prison blocks, and we cannot fit out an existing site to make it secure enough to hold offenders. Although we are deporting foreign national offenders as fast as legally possible, we cannot do so quickly enough to address the crisis. Although we must make progress on the remand population—those who are in prison while they await trial—such measures take time we do not have. That has left us with only one option to avert disaster.

The statutory instrument that we are considering today will change the law so that prisoners serving eligible standard determinate sentences will have their automatic release point adjusted to 40% rather than 50% of their sentence. That will mean that around 5,500 offenders will be released, in two tranches, in September and October. They will leave prison a few weeks or months early, to serve the rest of their sentence under strict licence conditions in the community. Thereafter, all qualifying sentences will continue to be subject to the new 40% release point.

Let me turn now to the detail of this legislation, the sentences that qualify for this measure, and those that do not. First, this change applies to both male and female offenders. This is a legal necessity and addresses the pressure in both the male and female prison estate. Although this measure does not apply to those serving in the youth estate, where capacity pressures are less acute, it does apply to a few individuals serving sentences under section 250 of the Sentencing Act 2020. Most of those serving these sentences are serving long terms that are excluded from the measure, as I will go on to explain. However, a few are in scope, and are included because they are likely to end their term in the adult estate.

The provision also includes those on a detention in a young offenders institution, and 18 to 20 year-olds who are held in adult prisons. As such, both contribute to the capacity crisis. As the measure must balance addressing the crisis in our prisons alongside the need to protect the public, certain sentences will be excluded. The worst violent and sexual crimes, which are subject to a 67% release, will not be eligible. Neither will violent offences subject to a sentence of four years or more under part 1 of schedule 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Sexual offences will be excluded, including offences related to child sexual abuse and grooming. We will exclude a series of offences linked to domestic abuse, including stalking, controlling or coercive behaviour and non-fatal strangulation.

National security offences under the Official Secrets Acts and National Security Act 2023, and offences determined to have been carried out for a foreign power, will also be excluded, as will serious terrorism offences and terrorism-connected offences, which remain subject to a 67% release at the Parole Board’s discretion. So too will terrorism offences, which are currently subject to a 50% release.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister for her statement. I clearly understand the Government’s predicament and the reason for bringing forward these legislative changes, but one matter that I and other elected representatives in this House have had to deal with in recent years is the predicament that victims face of meeting the perpetrator of a crime out on the streets, which brings back enormous trauma. I welcome what the Minister says about some conditions taking precedence in relation to those being released, but can she reassure the victims who are worried about what is happening? We need to have that reassurance on the record in this House. Madam Deputy Speaker, those people are worried and they want to be reassured.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He raises an incredibly important matter. I have had the feelings of victims very much in my mind as I have been forced to make this decision. Nothing in relation to the victim notification scheme or the victim contact scheme will change as a result of these measures. All the usual arrangements will apply and I shall detail some of those a little later in my speech.

Returning to the offences that are excluded, in each case we have excluded specific offences, rather than cohorts of offenders. That is a legal necessity. It is only possible to make this change in law, with reference to qualifying sentences.

In addition to these exclusions, there will be stringent protections in place around any early release. This change to the law will not take effect until September, which gives our hard-working Probation Service a crucial six-week implementation period. Probation officers will therefore have the time they need to assess the risk of each offender and prepare a plan to manage them safely in the community. All offenders released under this policy will be subject to stringent licence conditions. Where necessary, multi-agency public protection arrangements will be put in place to protect the public, as will multi-agency risk assessment conferences, which ensure that victims can be protected.

Victims eligible for the victim contact scheme or the victim notification scheme will be notified about releases and developments in their cases. Offenders will be ordered to wear electronic tags where required. Exclusion zones and curfews will be imposed where appropriate. Crucially, if an offender breaks any of the conditions imposed on them, they can be returned to prison immediately.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

I am sure that the whole House will be pleased to hear of the safeguards that the Lord Chancellor is putting in place. Is she confident that, by the time the changes to the scheme come into effect, both victim notification and probation—and, indeed, police and accommodation services—will be in a position to pick up those being released?

[Shabana Mahmood]

That is precisely why we have ensured that we have an implementation period for this policy change. That work will continue at pace over the summer, so that the Probation Service has the time to prepare proper release plans for offenders who will be released as a result of the changes and to ensure that all our obligations to victims and the wider public are fulfilled.

Let me also be clear that this change is not permanent. We will review this measure within 18 months of implementation—at the very latest, in March 2026. At that point, we believe that the situation in our prisons will have stabilised and that we will be able to reverse the measure, returning the automatic point of release to 50% of a sentence.

I want to directly address a question raised during the oral statement in the House last week. We have not included a specific sunset clause within the legislation that would end it automatically. We have pledged to be honest about the challenges in our prisons and the changes that we put in place to rise to them; that is a marked difference from the previous Administration’s approach. Given the scale of the crisis that we have inherited, placing an artificial time limit on this measure would be nothing more than an irresponsible gimmick. We have taken the very deliberate decision not to reverse this measure until we are certain that prison capacity has stabilised. The last Government allowed our prisons to fall into crisis. We will not introduce legislation that could force us back there again.

Finally, we will introduce a new, higher standard of transparency. Every quarter, we will publish data on the number of offenders released, and we will make it a statutory requirement for a prison capacity statement to be published annually, introducing that legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows. We are clear that this is the only safe way forward. The House does not have to take my word for it: we have heard senior figures in the police, prisons and probation all warning of what will happen if these measures are not taken. We have even heard my predecessor as Lord Chancellor come out in support of this measure.

Thanks to the action—or rather, inaction—of the last Prime Minister, our predecessors ran the prison estate to within days of disaster. As a result, they were forced to introduce a series of emergency measures, such as Operation Safeguard, which turned police cells into prison overflow, and Operation Early Dawn, a daily triage system that managed the flow of prisoners from police cells to the courts. They even came perilously close to triggering Operation Brinker, which is effectively a one-in, one-out measure in our prisons. It is the very last, desperate act available to forestall, by a matter of days, the total collapse of law and order in this country.

The last Government also introduced the flawed end of custody supervised licence scheme. When this new legislation takes effect, it will be my pleasure to end ECSL. With next to no implementation period, ECSL released offenders with only a few days of warning, and sometimes none at all. That gave the Probation Service no time to assess the risk of offenders, and next to no time to plan how they would be managed safely in the community. This new legislation, with its longer, eight-week implementation period, gives the Probation Service the time that it needs to prepare. The last Government’s early release scheme did not have the same exclusions that this new legislation has. Most notably, it provided no exclusions for offences linked to domestic abuse. That meant no exclusions for stalking, for strangulation, for controlling or coercive behaviour, or for breaches of restraining orders, non-molestation orders and domestic abuse orders, all of which are excluded in the legislation presented to the House today.

Perhaps worst of all, this quick fix was carried out under a veil of secrecy. A number of extensions were made to the scheme, which first released offenders up to 18 days early, then 35 to 60 days early, and finally up to 70 days early. That last extension was implemented without any announcement at all. Throughout, no data was ever published by the previous Government on the numbers released; it fell to this Administration to reveal the true scale of the ECSL scheme. Only now do we know that more than 10,000 offenders were rushed out under that veil of secrecy by the previous Administration.

Our approach will be different. Unlike under the previous Government, those sitting on the Opposition Benches will never have to chase me around this building to get hold of the numbers. The numbers will be put in the public domain for all to see and scrutinise, as they should have been all along. ECSL was one of a series of decisions that this Government believe must be examined more fully. That is why I have announced a review into how this capacity crisis was allowed to happen, which will look at why the necessary decisions were not taken at critical moments. We will shortly be appointing an independent chair for the review, which will conclude by the end of this year.

Let me be clear: the crisis in our prisons is not over. The prison population remains within a few hundred places of collapse. Last week, we temporarily closed HMP Dartmoor, taking around 200 places out of the prison estate. Although we were able to withstand that loss of capacity, any further changes—be they a further loss of supply or an unexpected increase in demand—could tip us into crisis. The measures that I have set out will take effect in September, giving probation officers the precious time they need to prepare. During that time, we will continue to monitor the prison population closely and we will be ready to introduce further emergency measures such as Operation Early Dawn or Operation Safeguard if required.

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

I have three prisons in my constituency. Will the Secretary of State explain how bad the situation will be if we do not act today?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. If we do not act today, we face a total collapse of law and order in this country. If we are forced to enact Operation Brinker, it will be a one-in, one-out system and we are then days away from the total collapse of the criminal justice system. It is a shocking state of affairs that the previous Government are entirely responsible for, and it has fallen to our Administration to start to put these matters right with the decisive action we are taking. This is the only option on the table. I remind the House again that we have no choice other than to pass this measure to deal with the crisis we have inherited.

Even once we have passed the measure, we will not yet be out of the woods. Our prisons are still in crisis. The last Government ran the prisons system on the basis of luck. They hung on by their fingernails until they could hang on no longer, and then they called an election. This Government will never run that risk. We will always take the necessary action.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her reassurance on the exclusion of sexual and domestic violence sentences. While prisons are about punishment and keeping our communities safe, one of the main ways we can keep our prison population down is through rehabilitation, rebuilding lives and reducing reoffending. Does she agree that education is central to that rehabilitation, and will she meet me and Milton Keynes college, the biggest provider of education in prisons, to discuss how we can take it further?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right that, ultimately, one of the long-term solutions to the capacity crisis must be to reduce reoffending; I am just coming on to that point in my speech. I will happily arrange for her to meet the Prisons Minister and I will take a close interest in what is happening in Milton Keynes.

Let us be under no illusion. The measure I have set out today is not a silver bullet. It does not end the prisons crisis. It is not the long-term solution. Instead, it buys us the time we need to take further measures that can address the prisons crisis not just now, but in the future. Later this year, we will publish a 10-year capacity strategy, which will outline the steps that the Government will take to acquire land for new prison sites and will ensure that building prisons—infrastructure that we deem to be of national importance—is a decision placed in a Minister’s hands.

We must also drive down reoffending. Currently, all too often our prisons create better criminals, not better citizens. Nearly 80% of offenders are reoffenders. A stronger Probation Service will be crucial to driving down reoffending, and we will start by recruiting at least 1,000 new trainee probation officers by the end of March 2025, bringing forward an existing commitment to address the immediate challenges we face today. We will also work with prisons to ensure that offenders can get the skills they need to contribute to society on release, as well as bringing together prison governors, local employers and the voluntary sector to help them into work, because we know that having a job makes offenders less likely to reoffend.

The last occupants of 10 Downing Street left our prisons in crisis.

[Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that Cities of London and Westminster has some of the highest levels of rough sleeping in the country, with 2,050 rough sleepers every night in Westminster and 482 in the City of London. St Mungo’s has highlighted that 68% of people released from prison into rough sleeping will reoffend within the year. It is simply essential that a planning process and needs assessment take place before people are released. Local authorities with the responsibility of preventing homelessness simply do not have the resources or working processes to ensure that that planning takes place. Will those processes and resources be in place before the legislation is implemented in September?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The point about homelessness, and what it means for recall into prison, is incredibly important. The implementation period allows probation time to prepare plans for every offender who will be released. That is different from the previous Government’s ECSL scheme, which gave no time at all. Some of these issues will be mitigated by that implementation period. Offenders leaving prison can access transitional accommodation for up to 84 nights if they are at risk of being homeless. Those provisions will continue as this scheme is rolled out.

[Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab)]

I am sure that many of us will have been appalled by the comments of the former Lord Chancellor, who said that the measure that this Government are taking was not taken by the last Government because

“you have to win votes.”

How does the Secretary of State respond to that?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The public made the decision for the previous Administration by voting them out of office in such a stunning manner. We do have to win votes—it is a democracy, at the end of the day—but we must also govern the country in a way that does not risk the total collapse of the criminal justice system. It is a sign of the Tory party’s collective nervous breakdown in government that the risk of running the criminal justice system into the ground, with the total collapse of law and order in this country, was allowed to happen in the first place. This new Administration will never take such a risk, and we are taking these measures today to start putting things right and clean up the mess that we have inherited from the Tory party.

The last occupants of 10 Downing Street left our prisons in crisis. They left our criminal justice system at the point of collapse. They were the guilty men; I know the historical weight of those words, but they are apt. The last Government placed the country in unconscionable peril. This Government’s legacy will be different: a prison system brought under control, a Probation Service that keeps the public safe, enough prison places to meet our needs, and prisons, probation and other services working together to break the cycle of reoffending. Today’s measure is not the long-term solution—I am not pretending that it is; there is a hard road ahead of us—but it is the necessary first step.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Ghani)]

I call the official Opposition spokesman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Priti Patel]

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

[Shabana Mahmood]

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

[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

We do indeed need to build more prisons, because, as was said, the present stock is not fit for purpose, but if we build more prisons to increase capacity, we will just end up with more prisoners. All the evidence suggests that prison population is a supply-led industry, and more prisons means more prisoners. I remind the Lord Chancellor that her colleague in the other place has made it clear that a third of prisoners should not be there. What will she do to look at alternatives to prison for the sad and wretched, not the cruel and dangerous?

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me be clear to the hon. Gentleman and the House. The Government will ensure that we have the prison places that we need so that we can protect the public and deal with the supply-side issues we have inherited from the previous Tory Government, who did not build the 20,000 places that they said would be ready by next year; they delivered only 6,000. In addition to providing the prison places that the country needs, we will deal with the problem of reoffending, because we are determined to ensure that we do not keep creating more and more victims. That is a strategy for cutting crime and for putting victims first.

The Government have taken action where before us came inaction. Once this action takes effect from September, we will be able to end the immediate crisis in our prisons, giving us time to introduce desperately needed long-term measures. This has been welcomed by voices from across the criminal justice system, from senior police officers to my predecessor in this role. It is the only safe option available to us, and to choose to act otherwise would leave our country in a state of unconscionable risk; one that I am not willing to take. For that reason, I commend the draft instrument to the House.

Question put.

HMP Dartmoor: Temporary Closure

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

I would like to announce the decision to close HMP Dartmoor temporarily, as His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service manage the levels of radon at HMP Dartmoor to ensure the safety of staff and prisoners.

Our prisons are in crisis. This is the most recent illustration of why this Government were forced to take urgent action to release pressure on the estate. We are committed to locking up the most dangerous offenders and protecting the public. Public safety will always be this Government’s priority.

Radon is a colourless, odourless radioactive gas formed by the radioactive decay of the small amounts of uranium that occur naturally in all rocks and soils, and is naturally more prevalent in the south-west of England. Studies have shown that increased exposure to radon increases the risk of lung cancer. His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service has been working with specialist radon experts over the past six months to manage the levels of radon at the prison.

Following the latest readings of radon found in non-accommodation areas of the prison on 12 July, the operational decision was taken by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to move all prisoners out of HMP Dartmoor, over a two-week period, and to close the prison temporarily while further mitigation and investigation takes place.

This was an operational decision as it had become unviable to continue with the mitigations to reduce radon while also running an effective prison regime. The Government will continue to work with staff at HMP Dartmoor and trade unions to manage the impact on staff, and prisoners are being transferred to other prisons of an appropriate security level.

The Government have already taken decisive action to address prison capacity pressures. While the loss of capacity at HMP Dartmoor will put additional strain on the system, the Government are confident the system can be sustained until the implementation of SDS40 in September, the measure I announced on 12 July which will change the automatic release point for those serving standard determinate sentences from 50% to 40%.

We will publish a 10-year capacity strategy later this year. We will build prison places, acquire land for new prison sites and classify prisons as being of national importance, placing decision making on planning for new prisons in Ministers’ hands. The Government are committed to longer-term reform of the system and reducing reoffending —making sure that punishment is effective and prisons make better citizens, not better criminals.

[HCWS21]

Prison Capacity

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement about prison capacity in England and Wales.

As you know, Mr Speaker, I wanted to make this announcement first in this House. However, given the scale of the emergency facing our prisons, I was forced to set out these measures before Parliament returned.

Since this Government took office two weeks ago, it has become clear that our prisons are in crisis and are at the point of collapse. The male prison estate has been running at over 99% capacity for the last 18 months. We now know that my predecessor warned No. 10 Downing Street but, rather than address this crisis, the former Prime Minister called an election, leaving a ticking time bomb. If that bomb were to go off—if our prisons were to run out of space—the courts would grind to a halt, suspects could not be held in custody and police officers would be unable to make arrests, leaving criminals free to act without consequence. In short, if we fail to act now, we face the prospect of a total breakdown of law and order.

Rather than act, the last Prime Minister allowed us to edge ever closer to catastrophe. Last week, there were around 700 spaces remaining in the male prison estate. With 300 places left, we reach critical capacity. At that point, the smallest change could trigger the chain of events I just set out. With the prison population rising, it is now clear that by September this year, our prisons will overflow. That means there is now only one way to avert disaster.

As the House knows, most of those serving standard determinate sentences leave prison at the halfway point, serving the rest of their sentence in the community. The Government now have no option but to introduce a temporary change in the law. Yesterday, we laid a statutory instrument in draft. Subject to the agreement of both Houses, those serving eligible standard determinate sentences will leave prison after serving 40%, rather than 50%, of their sentence in custody, and will serve the rest on licence. Our impact assessment estimates that around 5,500 offenders will be released in September and October. From that time until we are able to reverse this emergency measure, 40% will be the new point of automatic release for eligible standard determinate

sentences.

The Government do not take this decision lightly, but to disguise reality and delay any further, as the last Government did, is unconscionable. We are clear that this is the safest way forward. In the words of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, these steps are “the least worst option”. He went on to say that

“the worst possible thing would be for the system to block”,

and that any alternative to these measures would be “dangerous for the public”.

I understand that some may feel worried by this decision, but I can assure the House that we are taking every precaution available to us. There will be important exclusions. Sentences for the most dangerous crimes—for sexual and serious violent offences—will not change. That will also be the case for a series of offences linked to domestic violence, including stalking, controlling or coercive behaviour and non-fatal strangulation, as well as those related to national security.

We will also implement stringent protections. First, this change will not take effect until early September, giving the probation service time to prepare. Secondly, all offenders released will be subject to strict licence conditions, to ensure they can be managed safely in the community. Thirdly, offenders can be ordered to wear electronic tags, and curfews will be imposed where appropriate. Finally, if offenders breach the conditions of their licence, they can be returned to prison immediately.

Let me be clear: this is an emergency measure, not a permanent change. This Government are clear that criminals must be punished. We do not intend to allow the 40% release point to stand in perpetuity. That is why I will review these measures again, in 18 months’ time, when the situation in our prisons will have stabilised. Throughout, this Government will be transparent. We will publish data on the number of offenders released on a quarterly basis, and we will publish an annual prison capacity statement, legislating to make this a statutory requirement.

When we implement this change, we will stop the end of custody supervised licence scheme introduced by the last Government, which operated under a veil of secrecy. From the Opposition Benches, I was forced to demand more information about who was being released and what crimes they had committed. This Government have now released that data, showing that over 10,000 offenders were released early, often with very little warning to probation officers, placing them under enormous strain. This was only ever a short-term fix. It was one of a series of decisions this Government believe must be examined more fully, which is why we are announcing a review into how this capacity crisis was allowed to happen and why the necessary decisions were not taken at critical moments.

The measures I have set out today are not a silver bullet. The capacity crisis will not disappear immediately, and these measures will take time to take effect. But when they do, they will give us the time to address the prisons crisis, not just today but for years to come. This includes accelerating the prison building programme to ensure we have the cells we need. Later this year, we will publish a ten-year capacity strategy. That strategy will outline the steps that the Government will take to acquire land for new prison sites, and will classify prisons as being of national importance, placing decision making in Ministers’ hands. The Government are also committed to longer-term reform and cutting reoffending.

Too often, our prisons create better criminals, not better citizens, and nearly 80% of offending is reoffending, all at immense cost to communities and the taxpayer. As Lord Chancellor, my priority is to drive down that number. To do that, the Government will strengthen probation, starting with the recruitment of at least 1,000 new trainee probation officers by the end of March 2025. We will work with prisons to improve offenders’ access to learning and other training, as well as bringing together prison governors, local employers and the voluntary sector to get ex-offenders into work. We know that if an offender has a job within a year of release, they are less likely to reoffend. It is only by driving down reoffending that we will find a sustainable solution to the prisons crisis.

In a speech last week, I called the previous occupants of Downing Street “the guilty men”. I did not use that analogy flippantly. I believe that they placed the country in grave danger. Their legacy is a prison system in crisis, moments from catastrophic disaster. It was only by pure luck, and the heroic efforts of prison and probation staff, that disaster did not strike while they were in office. The legacy of this Government will be different. We will see a prison system brought under control; a probation service that keeps the public safe; enough prison places to meet our needs; and prisons, probation and other services working together to break the cycle of reoffending and so cut crime.

I never thought that I would have to announce the measures that I have set out today, but the scale of this emergency has forced this Government to act now, rather than delay any longer. This Government will always put the country and its safety first. I commend this statement to the House.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Edward Argar (Melton and Syston) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Lord Chancellor for very timely advance sight of her statement. May I take this opportunity to congratulate her on her appointment, as well as the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones)? I congratulate the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the hon. Member for Swindon South (Heidi Alexander) on her return to this place. Notwithstanding the occasional tussle across the Dispatch Box, I look forward to working constructively with Lord Chancellor, and to holding her and the Government to account. She is of course a decent, courteous, and incredibly able person, and I wish her well in her role.

We recognise the challenges and pressures facing the prison and criminal justice system, and the need to ensure that our prisons function effectively. Of course, the Government were well aware of those things when they were in opposition, as I know from challenging oral question sessions. In Government, we took the right decisions to significantly toughen up sentences for those who commit the worst crimes, in order to ensure that society was protected. To reflect that, we set in train the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era. More than 13,000 additional prison places were delivered while we were in government. Two new prisons opened; one prison is under construction; there are two prisons with planning permission; and one prison is on the cusp of a decision. Labour’s planning permission proposal for prisons would not impact any of those developments. In that respect, it is simply a gimmick.

Crucially, in the covid pandemic, supported by the then Opposition, we made the tough but correct decision not to mass-release prisoners as other countries did, and we maintained that bedrock of our justice system, trial by jury. Those correct decisions meant less space, and the number of people on remand waiting for trial or sentencing dramatically increasing from around 9,000 to 16,500, with resulting additional pressures.

In deciding to reduce capacity pressure, the paramount consideration for the Lord Chancellor must always be public protection. With that in mind, although we will of course have to scrutinise the detail of her proposed sentence reduction scheme, I must say that we have significant public protection concerns about what she has announced so far, and I hope that she will be able to address those concerns today.

The Lord Chancellor set out plans for limited exclusions relating to domestic abuse, but can she confirm that if a domestic abuser is convicted of, say, common assault, as is often the case, they would not be exempt from this policy? What exclusions does she plan to put in place to ensure that the worst, persistent, repeat offenders cannot benefit from this scheme? She set out that this was a temporary measure that will be reviewed after 18 months. What criteria will she set for its ending? Better still, will she commit to sunsetting the measure in the delegated legislation, and to returning to the House on this afresh in 18 months, if needed?

What additional resources are being made available to probation? We hear what the Lord Chancellor says about getting 1,000 more trainee probation staff by March 2025, but how many of those will actually be new? How many will be additional to those whom we already planned to have in place through the existing trajectory for new trainees? Can she guarantee that no prisoners will benefit from her early release scheme without GPS tags and strict conditions? Indeed, will she mandate the imposition of GPS tracking? Can she confirm to the House progress on bringing HMP Dartmoor’s places back into use, and her long-term plans for HMP Dartmoor’s places? The previous Government committed £30 million to acquire land for building new prisons, and had already begun drawing up a site longlist. Is she expanding that fund, or merely re-announcing the same thing?

More widely, the Lord Chancellor states that this is a temporary measure to ease pressure, so what are her long-term plans for meeting demand? Is she planning to scrap the tougher sentences for serious crimes that the Conservatives put in place to protect the public, and so to reverse our changes, or is she planning to build more prisons over and above the six that we committed to funding, to meet future demand? If it is the latter, has the Chancellor agreed the significant extra funding needed? Those are the long-term questions to which she and the Government owe this House and the public answers, given the changes that she is making today. I hope that she will be able to give clear answers.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I welcome the shadow Lord Chancellor to his place; we have always worked constructively together wherever appropriate, and I look forward to continuing to do so while he is in post. He made a heroic attempt to gloss over many years of failure in planning by the previous Government. I was surprised that he managed to say it all with a straight face. He knows full well that for many years the previous Government struggled to get such measures past many of their Back-Benchers, not all of whom have returned post the general election, but some of whom remain here, and remain implacable opponents of any kind of planning developments in their constituency. They think that national infrastructure is a good thing as long as it is elsewhere. I look forward to seeing whether there is a change of heart among those on the Opposition Benches. It would be welcome, because this Government will not allow the planning system to prevent our country from having either the prison places or the national infrastructure that we so desperately need. He also knows full well that of the 20,000 places that were supposed to have been provided by the previous Government by 2025, only 6,000 have been delivered.

I am concerned about the position relating to prisoners on remand. The shadow Lord Chancellor rightly notes that the number of those on remand in our prison estate is around 16,000. Of course, judges need to be able to remand people to prison for public protection reasons. That will not change. He will know, given his former role in the Department, that there are no immediate solutions, because many of those individuals will in the end be sentenced to custody. I am considering all options available to me for driving that number down as much as possible. In the end, we will need our 10-year capacity plan to take account of what we expect the sentenced population to look like.

On the sentences that are covered by this measure, the shadow Lord Chancellor will know that in order to make a change by means of a statutory instrument, it has to relate to specific offences. That is why we have taken every precaution and every option available to us to exclude sentences connected to domestic abuse. He knows that those will include—I am sure that he has seen the draft statutory instrument—offences related to the breaching of a non-molestation order; stalking, which I mentioned in my statement, including stalking involving the fear of violence, serious alarm or distress; strangulation or suffocation; controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship; the breaching of a restraining order; and a breach of a domestic abuse protection order. The common offences that we know are connected to domestic abuse are caught in the statutory instrument. On multiple and repeat offences, he will know that the decision relies on the combination that is reviewed when the sentencing calculation is done.

As I said in my statement, I will return in 18 months to update the House. We want to remove this temporary measure as quickly as possible, and we will be transparent throughout. The shadow Lord Chancellor will not need to chase me around this building trying to find out what is happening, as I had to when I was in his position and we were considering the previous Government’s early release scheme. We will be transparent in a way that the previous Government simply were not. We will do a quarterly release of all the data, and we will update the House regularly.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman followed the announcement on Friday closely, so he will know that the announcement on probation does not involve new money. It is a re-prioritisation of resources, because strengthening probation to make sure that it is in the strongest possible position to deal with the early release scheme is incredibly important to us.

On Dartmoor, the right hon. Gentleman knows the history very well. Safety is our No. 1 priority, and after close monitoring of the situation at HMP Dartmoor, it has been decided that prison will be temporarily closed. I will update the House as the situation develops. I say to him gently that we have committed to a 10-year capacity strategy. We recognise that we need to make sure that this country has the prison places that it needs. We will deliver where the previous Government failed, and we will never allow the planning process to get in the way of having the prisons that we need in this country.

Longer term, however, we will also look at driving down reoffending, because the entrenched cycle of reoffending creates more victims and more crime, and it has big impacts on our ability to have the capacity that we need in our prison estate. That is why this Government will make it a key priority to drive down reoffending. That is a strategy for creating better citizens, not better criminals. It is a strategy for cutting crime, and in the long term, it will deal with our capacity problems for years to come.

[Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place on the Government Front Bench. The imprisonment for public protection prison population is more than 2,700; 99% of those people are over tariff, and more than 700 prisoners are now 10 years over their original tariff. Can she accelerate the Ministry of Justice’s refreshed IPP action plan to help to reduce the prison population and right that wrong?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The situation with IPP prisoners is of great concern, and I know that huge numbers of Members on both sides of this House care about it deeply. I share that concern. IPP prisoners are not caught in the changes that we are putting forward; those are indeterminate sentences, not standard determinate sentences. We supported the previous Government in what we thought were sensible changes to the licence period and the action plan, and we will continue that work. However, any changes made have to account for public protection risks, first and foremost. We want to make progress with that cohort of prisoners, but not in a way that impacts public protection.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Lib Dem spokesperson.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I also welcome the Lord Chancellor to her new position, and thank her for advance sight of her statement.

It has been apparent for months that measures of this sort would be necessary. These are described as temporary measures, but 18 months is a very long time for temporary measures. There would be a real danger of damaging public confidence in our criminal system if the measures were to be extended beyond that point.

The answer surely has to be more than just building more prison capacity. The problem is not that our prison estate is too small; it is that we send too many people to prison, and that the time they spend there does nothing to tackle the problems of drug and alcohol dependency, poor literacy and numeracy skills, and poor mental health, which led to their incarceration. Can we hope to hear in the very near future the Government’s comprehensive plan to tackle the issue of the time that people spend in prison?

Finally, may I bring to the Lord Chancellor’s attention the report published this morning by His Majesty’s inspectorate of probation on the failings of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough probation delivery unit? That report outlined that our duty of care to those whom we lock up should not end the day they leave custody. When will we have a response to that report?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place. On the 18-month period, we have inherited a criminal justice system in complete crisis and at risk of total breakdown and collapse. It will take some time, by necessity, for us to be able to put that right. I do not want to mislead the public that somehow these changes will have a quick effect. The system is in dire straits and it will take time to repair it. It is right that we are up front and honest about that time, and I will update the House regularly.

As I say, this Government’s approach will be very different from that of the last Government. We will have a regular release of data, and I anticipate that I will regularly appear before Members to talk about that data, but I welcome that opportunity because it is important that the public are kept updated, and that their representatives in this place are able to scrutinise what is happening and hold us to account. We will need time for the measures to take effect to enable us to move the system to a position of greater health.

In terms of who goes to prison, why and for how long, when we have overcrowded prisons, there is no capacity to do much other than hold people in their cells. The activity that we know is important to help people in the prison system to turn their lives around, come out as better citizens and make better choices, having made amends to society, cannot happen in deeply overcrowded prisons. That is why dealing with the capacity crisis is so necessary not just to prevent the collapse of the criminal justice system but to cut reoffending in the long term. Creating some space will allow us to introduce proposals to bring down reoffending rates in the country.

On probation, I pay tribute to all probation staff for their tremendous work. My first visit in my new role was to meet probation staff in Bedfordshire. I recognise that they have been working in a system and a service under extreme strain and facing real difficulty. That is why we will onboard 1,000 new trainee probation officers before March 2025 to add extra capacity, and why returning the probation system to health will be a key priority for this Government.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I declare a non-pecuniary interest: I am an honorary life member of the Prison Officers’ Association.

In seeking to be fair, as she always is, my right hon. Friend is being too kind on the last Government. They brought about a staffing crisis in our prisons that has brought rehabilitation to an end and levels of violence that we have never seen before. Will she bring forward as soon as possible a workforce strategy for our prisons and probation? As a matter of urgency, will she look in particular at Feltham young offenders institution, which has become a violent emergency for staff and for prisoners themselves?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My right hon. Friend is right. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all the staff in our prisons, who do an excellent job under very difficult circumstances. He is right to acknowledge that the levels of violence in our prisons have been increasing, placing those staff at ever greater risk. This is similar to the question that I just answered on probation. When prisons are so badly overcrowded, it is incredibly difficult to run any kind of regime that can do good work on rehabilitation, or provide a safe atmosphere for the staff who work in them.

I will, of course, have conversations in the usual way when it comes to discussions about the spending review and other measures that the Chancellor will bring forward. I hope that I need not tell my right hon. Friend that I will bat hard for our Department and the people I represent. That will all happen in the usual way. We are committed to publishing our 10-year capacity strategy as quickly as possible so that we can begin the process of returning our system to some sort of health. I thank him for raising Feltham; I will look at that and write to him.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I listened very carefully to the Lord Chancellor’s comments about Members present and past who had legitimate concerns about new-build prison proposals in their constituencies. She will no doubt be aware of the proposals for a new mega-prison in Buckinghamshire on farmland adjacent to HMP Spring Hill and HMP Grendon. Those proposals are deeply unpopular in my constituency, first, on fairness grounds—they are affecting communities just one mile from the construction of HS2, which are already under siege from big construction—and, secondly, because the prisons in Buckinghamshire cannot recruit to the vacancies that they already have. Fully staffing a brand new prison is just not going to happen, so I ask the new Lord Chancellor to do my constituents the courtesy of sitting down with me so that she can hear why this particular proposal just will not work.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for his question. May I gently say that this is part of the problem? I am not going to get into the specifics of his particular constituency or those particular planning proposals—those proposals are already within the planning system, as the shadow Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar), alluded to in his remarks—but prisons have to be built in this country. We have to do more building, we have to do it more quickly, and we have rightly said that we will always treat prisons as of national importance. That was actually a change brought in by the previous Government to unlock the delays that they had faced for many years, particularly when concerns were raised by their own Members of Parliament.

We take too long to build any kind of infrastructure in this country. That will not be the approach of this Government, so while I am very happy to consider any proposals that any Members of this House have about specifics in their constituency, the reality is that prisons will always be deemed by this Government to be of national importance, and they will be built.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her new post, and thank her for reassuring us that this scheme will not apply to sexual violence, domestic abuse and stalking—that will really reassure survivors in my constituency. Will she review how the scheme will affect those with learning disabilities who are in prison without support, and ensure that there is good communication with local councils on the housing of ex-offenders, with early notification that is not on a Friday afternoon?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I welcome my hon. Friend to her place. This change is designed in part to allow probation to do the job that it would normally do when it comes to prisoner releases on licence. We will have an eight-week implementation period; that is one of the big differences between this scheme and the previous Government’s end-of-custody supervised licensing scheme, which was pretty chaotic and opaque. Things moved very quickly, not allowing probation the time to do its job. I am not going to pretend that the eight weeks is ideal, but it is better than where we might have been: it allows the sentencing calculations to be redone and some planning to then happen in the normal way, so that we can make sure that, when those people are released into the community, they have a proper release plan in place. Once we are into the prospective element of the change, I believe that the process will be much smoother, and probation will be able to do a much more effective job of managing those prisoners as they are released into the community.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llywydd. The Secretary of State is entirely correct to say that prisons are in crisis: they have been in crisis for years, and reform is urgently necessary. It is evident that there are many people in prison who should not be there, but that is the only place that they can be—people for whom community-based prevention and rehabilitation would be way better. The last Government promised us a women’s residential centre based in Swansea, but according to an answer to my written parliamentary question earlier this year, delays and uncertainty over planning saw that proposal sidelined. Will the new Labour Government commit to succeed where the last Government so obviously and appallingly failed and facilitate the establishment of a women’s residential centre in Wales, where we have no women’s prison?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the right hon. Member—that is a very compelling bit of lobbying from her. May I offer to meet with her, so that we can discuss this issue in person?

[Ruth Jones (Newport West and Islwyn) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State and her team to their places. Can the Secretary of State comment on what was reported in The Guardian earlier this week? Apparently, the former director general for propriety and ethics wrote to the previous Prime Minister telling him that a failure to act on the prison crisis would bring the criminal justice system to a point of “critical failure”. Does she agree that, if this is true, that is an enormous dereliction of duty by the Conservatives?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend. I did read those reports in The Guardian. Of course, none of us has had sight of any of those papers. If those reports are true, it is very worrying indeed. As I said in my opening remarks, I did not use the phrase “the guilty men” lightly when I spoke about the crisis we have inherited and the change we are being forced to make. I believe it was a serious dereliction of duty by the previous Government. I could hardly believe the state of the prison system that I inherited, and I think we have been forced to make the changes that we have because of that failure.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I welcome the Lord Chancellor to her post. I just want to push her slightly on the description of this scheme as a temporary scheme. Whatever she may say, the legislative impact of what the Government are doing will be a permanent change. If she wants to be subject to scrutiny and to have a temporary scheme, there is absolutely no reason why she cannot sunset the legislation to be a genuinely temporary change, and come back later if she thinks she needs to reintroduce it. That is a way to welcome scrutiny and be true to what she says about its being a temporary scheme.

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is a temporary scheme. We will revert to the usual 50% level as quickly as possible. I think 18 months is the right period for me to return to this House. The hon. Member will have many opportunities to scrutinise these changes because this Government will be different from the previous Government, because we will be transparent all the way through. I anticipate many moments in this House when I will be challenged. It is a temporary change. It will always be a temporary change.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have had many constituents placed in prison because of failed mental health services, when the crisis team does not turn up and there is no capacity in secure accommodation. Will the Secretary of State have urgent discussions with the Secretary of State for Health to make an assessment of those people who should be in mental health services rather than in the criminal justice system?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right that we have broad failure across many of our public services, including within the health service. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has said, we have inherited an NHS that is “broken”. I will have conversations with him on the matter that she raises, but it is important, as we try to return the prison system to health, that we do so in conjunction with the other public services that we know are crucial to the proper functioning of the criminal justice service.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Can I welcome the Lord Chancellor to her place and wish her well in the very important role she now has? It is imperative that, when a judge sentences a criminal, consideration of fulfilling justice prevails more than consideration of spaces in prison. How will the Lord Chancellor address the difficulties to ensure that justice and serving an appropriate sentence will remain the focus? The logistics of that can then be dealt with.

[Shabana Mahmood]

The hon. Member is right. In the end, individual sentencing decisions are for judges. They have discretion to apply the law as they see fit in the circumstances of the cases in front of them, and nothing that we have decided changes that picture. More broadly, we will have a sentencing review—it is something we committed to in our manifesto, and I will say more about that later in the year—to make sure that all our sentencing is consistent and coherent, and that our sentences do actually work, which is what they are meant to do.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool Wavertree) (Lab)]

I welcome the Lord Chancellor to her place. She has certainly hit the ground running in a very difficult backdrop from the previous Government. We know only too well that, often, prisoners are released on Friday afternoon, with little or no access to statutory services, and they become homeless. What assurances can she give the House that this has been thought through, and the unintended consequence of this decision will not be extending the homelessness crisis?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The implementation period that we have put forward in our proposals will allow the probation service time to prepare. As I have said before, that is different from the early release scheme brought forward by the previous Government; it will allow the probation service to do its job and ensure that there is a proper plan for all releases into the community so that they are successful releases. I am sure that my hon. Friend will know about the community accommodation service, which provides transitional accommodation for up to 84 nights for those who are at risk of leaving prison homeless. That will continue. The previous Government scheme released prisoners with little or no warning. This scheme is different. It gives probation time to prepare and should hopefully iron out some of the previous problems.

[Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on her appointment.

As has been mentioned, reoffending has been a major problem. Drug and alcohol rehabilitation services are at a premium and need looking at, but another key factor is ensuring that when prisoners leave prison, they get a job. What work is being done to ensure that there are more employment opportunities for those who are leaving prison?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said earlier, employment is crucial, because we know that if those who leave prison are in work within a year of leaving prison, they are much less likely to reoffend. That is why one of our manifesto commitments was setting up employment councils in our prisons—bringing together prison governors and local employers to make sure we are doing everything we can to drive down rates of reoffending. We will have more to say on that in the coming weeks and months.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I associate myself with the comments of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), because the women’s residential centre she speaks of happens to be in my constituency.

The Lord Chancellor will be very aware of the current issues in Parc prison, Bridgend. I pay tribute to the very hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Chris Elmore) and to the previous Welsh Affairs Committee. The previous Government blamed the local culture of the community for the issues that were arising in Bridgend; I certainly find that insulting. There is also an issue regarding staff there, and the intimidation that they and their families have faced. Will the Lord Chancellor reinforce and support those in the Prison and Probation Service who work in Parc prison, Bridgend, and work—particularly with my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend—to ensure that the culture in the prison changes and people are safe?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I would be happy to meet both my hon. Friend and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts)—individually or together—to talk about the women’s prison, and to write to them on that point.

In relation to Parc, I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Chris Elmore). I would be happy to work with him and other hon. Members with an interest. I am deeply concerned about the situation at Parc prison, and pay tribute to the staff who work there. As I have said many times, I am in absolute awe of the efforts made by staff across the Prison and Probation Service, who keep our system—a system which has been in dire straits—going under extreme pressure. I will happily meet hon. Members to discuss Parc, but it is a situation that I am already monitoring closely.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on her new position; I am sure she is going to do an amazing job.

The law on joint enterprise needs urgent review. Thousands of young black men are incarcerated for long prison terms for crimes they have not committed. Will my right hon. Friend state how and when she is looking to undertake a review of that law?

[Shabana Mahmood]

Of course, joint enterprise is not related to the changes we are making today, but I know that it is an issue of real concern and interest for my hon. Friend and other Members across the House. As I understand it, the Crown Prosecution Service is already reviewing the evidence. It is right for that to conclude before the new Government set out any measures, but I will be engaging closely with the CPS on its review.

[Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and those on the Front Bench on their appointments.

We in Norfolk are lucky to have, in Sarah Taylor, a police and crime commissioner who is standing up with integrity and honesty, just like our new Government, and being open. What work will the Secretary of State be undertaking to ensure that police and crime commissioners in Norfolk and around the country are being supported in the work they need to do?

[Shabana Mahmood]

Police and crime commissioners are crucial to helping us to manage the current crisis and as we move the system to some health, hopefully sooner rather than later. I had meetings with many police and crime commissioners while in opposition. I have already met the lead representative for the PCCs on the Criminal Justice Board, and that has already met to talk about how we make these changes in the safest possible way. I will continue engaging in that way.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I welcome the Lord Chancellor and her team to their places on the Front Bench.

Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous), is expanding this scheme to include unfair indeterminate sentences not worth further consideration? That would provide an additional 2,700 potential early releases.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I welcome my hon. Friend back to her place. I am well aware of the issues around indeterminate sentences for public protection. I know that matter is of great interest to Members, as it was to me as a constituency Member of Parliament. I know this territory well. It would not be appropriate to make changes in relation to IPP prisoners, because there is a different order of public protection risk. I am determined to make more progress on IPP prisoners. As I say, we will build on the work done by the previous Government. We worked constructively with the previous Administration on sensible changes that could be made in the safest possible way for the public. Those changes were on the licence period and the action plan, which we will crack on with as a new Government. Any changes that we make to the regime for that type of sentence, which has been rightly abolished, must be done while balancing the public protection risk, which we would never take lightly.

Personal Injury Discount Rate Review 2024

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Shabana Mahmood)]

I would like to announce that I have now commenced a review of the personal injury discount rate, in line with my statutory duties.

The Damages Act 1996, as amended by the Civil Liability Act 2018, requires the Lord Chancellor to commence a review of the personal injury discount rate within five years of and including the date on which the previous rate was announced, which occurred on 15 July 2019. This is stipulated by schedule A1 to the Damages Act 1996, as inserted by section 10(2) of the Civil Liability Act 2018.

The Damages Act requires that I, in conducting the review, must consult (a) an expert panel, which has already been appointed for this review in June 2023; and (b) HM Treasury. Both consultees are then required by the Act to respond to my consultation within 90 days.

In accordance with these statutory requirements, I commenced this review on 15 July 2024, with the consequence that I must conduct the review and make the determination regarding the rate on or before 11 January 2025. On that same day I sent letters to the expert panel and HM Treasury to begin their period of consultation. I have also deposited copies of the terms of reference for their respective consultations in the Libraries of both Houses of Parliament.

I will make a further announcement on the completion of the review.

[HCWS4]