Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend rightly identifies an expanding area of business, sadly, for the courts and the police. He will be pleased to know that just last week, I held a meeting with the National Economic Crime Centre at the National Crime Agency to talk specifically about this issue. He will understand the complexity of online fraud in particular, whereby the offender may well be overseas, laundering money through a third territory and banking it in a fourth. Nevertheless, we need to do more to increase our capacity and capability to tackle this issue, to which we are all, including me, subject.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab) [V]]

Far too many women are sentenced by our courts to short or very short prison sentences. The overwhelming evidence is that non-custodial sentences, with properly resourced and properly structured alternatives to prison, work better in preventing reoffending. What are the Government doing to ensure that we invest in these non-custodial options for the courts to use?

[Robert Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with a lot of experience, not just as a Member of this House but as a former police and crime commissioner. He will be reassured to know that the female offender strategy continues. In particular, with regard to the work that we are doing on pre-sentence reports, we will help courts and decision makers come to conclusions based upon community sentence treatment requirements, whether that is support for addiction or for mental health problems, which are a constructive direct alternative to those short terms of imprisonment that he rightly criticises.