Moved by Lord Timpson That the draft Order laid before the House on
17 July be approved. The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice
(Lord Timpson) (Lab) My Lords, following the Oral Statement which I
repeated in this House on Wednesday 24 July, your Lordships will
know that our prisons are in crisis. The male prison estate has
been running at around 99% capacity for 18 months, undermining
safety for staff and offenders and making the justice system
vulnerable to...Request free trial
Moved by
That the draft Order laid before the House on 17 July be
approved.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice () (Lab)
My Lords, following the Oral Statement which I repeated in this
House on Wednesday 24 July, your Lordships will know that our
prisons are in crisis. The male prison estate has been running at
around 99% capacity for 18 months, undermining safety for staff
and offenders and making the justice system vulnerable to
unforeseen events. If we do not act urgently, our prisons will
reach full capacity, and the justice system may grind to a halt.
The courts would have to stop holding trials, the police would be
unable to make arrests, and criminals would be free to act
without consequence. If we do not act now, this will become
reality by September. Taking immediate action is the only way to
protect the public from a breakdown in law and order.
I want to assure your Lordships that we have explored all
options. In the little time we have, we cannot build more prisons
nor add more prison blocks. While we are deporting foreign
national offenders as fast as is legally possible, this will not
save enough places to address this crisis. Much of the pressure
comes from the straightforward growth in the remand
population—those who are in prison awaiting trial. While we are
committed to making progress on remand, it would take time that
we do not have. This has left us with only one option.
Before I set out the details, let me say that I am grateful to
your Lordships for agreeing to bring this SI forward before the
Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has been re-formed and
therefore able to consider it. As I have already set out, this
change may be implemented with urgency. It has therefore been
necessary to ensure that we have a full debate on the substance
of the issues as soon as possible. I look forward to reading the
committee's report and that of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny
Committee.
Returning to the SI that we are considering today, it will change
the law so that prisoners serving eligible standard determinate
sentences will have their automatic release point for those
sentences adjusted to 40% rather than 50%. This will mean that
around 5,500 offenders will be released in two tranches in
September and October. They will leave prison 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. This change applies to
both male and female offenders. It also applies to some youth
offences, specifically youth sentences under Section 250 of the
Sentencing Act 2020, which are imposed on under-18s for more
serious offences. They are included, because such offences are
likely to end their term in the adult estate. However, as these
sentences are for serious crimes, many are likely to be excluded
from this measure, as I will go on to explain.
While this measure must address the crisis in our prisons, this
must be balanced with public protection. Therefore, certain
sentences will be excluded. The worst violent and sexual crimes,
which are subject to a 67% release point, will not be eligible.
Neither will serious 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 we will exclude a
series of offences linked to domestic abuse, including stalking,
controlling or coercive behaviour and non-fatal strangulation.
National security and terrorism offences under the Official
Secrets Act and the 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. No sentence subject to
Parole Board release will be included. In each case, we have
excluded specific offences rather than cohorts of offenders. That
is a legal necessity. The power to make the SI applies to the
release point of qualifying individual sentences, rather than to
types of offender. In addition to these exclusions, there will be
stringent protections in place around an early release.
This change to the law will not take effect until September. This
has given our hard-working Prison and Probation Service a crucial
eight-week implementation period to recalculate sentences and
plan for the releases. Probation officers will have the time they
need to assess the risk of each offender and prepare a plan to
manage them safely in the community. Every offender released will
be subject to the same stringent licence conditions they would
have been if released at 50%. Where necessary, multi-agency
public protection arrangements will be put in place to protect
the public, as will multi-agency risk assessment conferences that
consider how best to protect victims. Victims eligible for the
victim contact scheme or the victim notification scheme will be
notified about releases and developments in their cases, and, as
now, they will be able to request licence conditions, such as
non-contact requirements or exclusion zones to protect them from
unwanted contact. Offenders will be ordered to wear electronic
tags where required. Exclusion zones and curfews will be imposed
where appropriate. If an offender breaks any of these conditions,
they can be returned to prison.
The Government are clear that this change is not permanent. We
will review it within 18 months of implementation, at the very
latest in March 2026 when we believe that the situation in our
prisons will have stabilised and we will be able to return the
automatic point of release to 50% of a sentence.
I want to address directly the question of a sunset clause, which
we have not included in this legislation, to 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. Given the scale of the crisis, placing an artificial time
limit on this measure would be irresponsible. We have taken the
very deliberate decision not to reverse this measure until we are
certain that prison capacity has stabilised.
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 this legislation
as soon as parliamentary time allows. This is a departure from
the approach of the previous Government, who introduced the end
of custody supervised licence scheme, the ECSL scheme. They did
not disclose the data, but now we know that more than 10,000
offenders have been released under ECSL.
When this new legislation takes effect we can end ECSL, which
gave the Probation Service sometimes mere days to prepare for
releases. That meant little time to assess the risk of offenders
and plan how they would be managed safely in the community.
5.45pm
This new legislation's six-week programme release planning period
will give the Probation Service the time it needs to prepare. It
will deliver more predictable and stable release dates, meaning
that the Probation Service will have sufficient time to work with
all offenders to prepare them for release and to consider and
arrange accommodation for them. That is particularly important
for offenders who are at risk of being homeless, and who can
access transitional accommodation for up to 84 nights. Probation
services will also have more time to ensure that offenders
leaving custody have continuity of healthcare, including mental
health support.
ECSL did not have the same exclusions that this new legislation
has. It provided no exclusions for offences linked to domestic
abuse, stalking, non-fatal strangulation, controlling or coercive
behaviour, or for order breaches, for example of non-molestation
orders or domestic abuse protection orders, which are excluded in
this SI.
ECSL was one of a series of decisions that must be examined more
fully. That is why the Lord Chancellor announced a review into
how this capacity crisis was allowed to happen. The review will
look at why the necessary decisions were not taken at critical
moments and will conclude by the end of the year; we will shortly
be appointing an independent chair for it.
However, the measure that I have set out today does not end the
prison crisis or provide a long-term solution. It buys us time to
take further measures to address prison capacity, not just now
but in the future. Later this year we will publish a 10-year
capacity strategy outlining the steps the Government will take to
acquire land for new prison sites. It will ensure that building
prisons deemed to be of national importance is a decision that is
placed in the Minister's hands. We must also drive down
reoffending, which I am personally committed to achieving. A
stronger Probation Service will be crucial to that, 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 challenges more quickly. We will also work with
prisons to ensure that offenders can get the skills they need to
contribute to society on their release, as well as bringing
together prison governors, local employers and the voluntary
sector to help them into work, because we know—and I have seen
first-hand—that having a job makes offenders less likely to
reoffend.
The prison population remains within a few hundred places of
criminal justice collapse. I learned recently just how
challenging the situation is when we had to temporarily close HMP
Dartmoor last week, taking around 200 places out of the prison
estate. Although we are able to withstand that loss of capacity,
any further challenges, be that a further loss of supply or an
unexpected increase in demand, could tip us into crisis. Until
this measure takes effect, we will continue to monitor the prison
population closely and be ready to introduce further emergency
measures if required. We are not out of the woods yet, but I am
proud to be part of a Government who will take the necessary
action and brave decisions necessary to protect the public. The
change that we are debating today is the only safe way forward in
the time we have available to act. I beg to move.
(Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his position; this is the
first time I have been able to debate with him. I hope he has
plenty of time to sort out the mess of the prison system. I
support the order; there is obviously no alternative to passing
it.
The Minister touched on the reasons why that has occurred. My
understanding is that the offender management unit in the
Ministry of Justice calculates what the demand will be for prison
places, taking into consideration all the changes in legislation.
Anything that we do in legislation makes it change its
calculation, and I am pretty confident that the unit told
Ministers a long time ago that we had problems. One reason why I
got involved in looking at the penal system was a debate
initiated by in 2017
on overcrowding in the prison system. We just let it go on and on
until eventually we had to do something, which is exactly what
the Minister is doing.
My only question is: is there any scope to do something about
unnecessary recalls? Released prisoners can be recalled for
fairly trifling bureaucratic reasons, which causes a lot of
disruption and an increase in the prison population. Also, is
there any scope to reduce the remand population, which the
Minister mentioned? I look forward to supporting the Minister in
his work.
(GP)
My Lords, it was a pleasure to hear the categories that will not
be up for release, because nobody wants sexual predators and
misogynists out on the streets—so I am delighted to hear that.
But when the issue of prisons comes up, we always have to ask
ourselves: what are they for? They ought to be for keeping
dangerous people off the streets, but that is not what we do at
the moment; we throw into prison an awful lot of people who
should not be there. Through the Minister, this Government could
think about changing who we put in prison because, quite
honestly, the number of people going to prison is ludicrous when
you think about some of the crimes they have committed.
Drug law reform is an obvious area. It seems absolutely
ridiculous to put people in prison because of drugs offences when
they have access to even more drugs there than they do out on the
streets. Prisons are failing in that way, and I would be
interested to hear what the Minister had to say about drug use in
prison. Unfortunately, our new Prime Minister has indicated that
he wants to continue the ideological war on drugs. Can the
Minister at least review the evidence from the Advisory Council
on the Misuse of Drugs and publish its advice? The Conservative
Government kept it secret because it called for the
decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs.
It is good to hear about restorative justice, which is something
further that that this Government could talk about. It is a
voluntary process whereby people who have been harmed can work
with the people who have caused the harm and perhaps identify how
both parties can resolve or move on from it. We had amendments on
this to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, so it would be good to
hear the Government's thoughts on this area.
Of course, if we are going to let people out of prison, we have
to remember the scandal of the IPP prisoners. I was sad that the
Minister did not mention them today because that category has
clearly suffered the most incredible injustice. The legislation
was designed to keep serious offenders in prison, but instead we
ended up with nearly 3,000 people, most of them non-violent,
trapped in prison. IPP prisoners turn to suicide and hunger
strike. This is a legacy of the last Labour Government that the
new Labour Government need to fix, as I pointed out.
One report says that someone got, in effect, 16 years in prison
for stealing a flowerpot at 17. A prison sentence of 18 months
should not turn into 18 years, which has also happened. It is no
wonder that our prisons are overcrowded if we keep throwing
people in there to rot for minor crimes. So do the new Government
have a plan to work at pace to safely release IPP prisoners where
possible? Is there a proposal for new legislation on this? We
need the new Minister to sort out a plan on this. We need a
resentencing programme to get the majority of IPP prisoners out
of prison. Apart from that, I can say only, “Good luck”.
(Con)
I wonder whether I may ask a very simple question. I very much
support what is being put forward, but in my history no
Government have ever answered the simple question: how come
Britain locks up so many more people than comparable countries in
the rest of Europe? It seems pretty barmy. I do not feel any less
safe in Paris or Berlin than I do in London, and yet both those
countries do not lock people up in the way we do. It is a
fundamental and simple question. I hope very much that we will
pass this, of course, but I hope it will be in the context of the
Government being the first of any political party—the previous
Labour Government refused to look at this as well—to look at this
fundamental question and ask themselves, “Why?”
The answer must be that there are better ways of doing what we
are trying to do. If it means ignoring pressure from the Daily
Mail, then I am afraid that is what we have to do. Given the
brave statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer made today about
cuts, it might be a very good opportunity for this Government to
take a new look at why we lock people up.
(Con)
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord to the House and to his place
on the Government Front Bench. He is getting an easier ride on
this statutory instrument in your Lordships' House than might be
the case in a more populist environment, but I have no difficulty
in lending my support to it as well. Like the noble Baroness,
Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, I want to focus my few minutes on IPP
prisoners.
It is clear, of course, that there are mathematical challenges
involved in reducing from one percentage to another a quantum
that starts out being indeterminate, and so a straightforward
application of reducing from 50% to 40% the sentences imposed on
IPP prisoners is not going to work. That is obvious and
straightforward, but it does not mean to say that we should be
passing by these prisoners when we consider this instrument, and
yet that is in fact what we are doing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, gave some figures
earlier. Your Lordships' House is familiar with this scandal, and
she described not only the numbers but the mental health issues
people are suffering. I would add only two things. She did not
mention—I am sure she would have, had she gone on—the mental
health problems caused to the families of IPP prisoners, which
are serious and persistent and have gone on for years, in many
cases. Nor did she say, as has been said by other noble Lords—not
least the noble and learned Lord, , on a number of
occasions—that the root cause of these mental health problems
does not arise from the prisoner himself, or in a few cases
herself, but from what we have done through the criminal justice
system to these people. It is on us that they have these mental
health problems.
I read in the press—here, I am possibly setting myself up to be
slapped down by the Minister—that the Minister has said that IPP
prisoners cannot be included here because they are peculiarly,
particularly or distinctly dangerous, as opposed to prisoners
with determinate sentences. As I am sure he would agree, on
reflection, that is simply not the case. What is distinctive
about IPP prisoners is not the danger they pose but the nature of
the sentence they are serving. There are far more dangerous
people with determinate sentences who will be released at the end
of their sentence, however dangerous they are, be it after 40%,
50%, 67% or 100% of their sentence. The doors of that jail will
open and they will walk free, however dangerous they are. It is
not the danger they pose to society that determines whether
prisoners are released; it is the character of the sentence
imposed on them, and that needs to be borne firmly in mind. With
that in mind, I have three questions to put to the Minister. I
will fully understand, of course, if he is not able to answer
them today, and if he is not, I am sure he will want to take the
opportunity to write.
The first question is—and this is crucial—will the Minister
confirm that the implementation of the IPP action plan remains a
top government priority, and a priority in his department, and
that that has been communicated to officials? That is absolutely
crucial: if the IPP action plan is to be carried forward and have
effect, it has to be understood that Ministers are totally behind
it—as, I think the Minister would acknowledge, the last set of
Ministers were totally behind it before they left office.
Secondly, can the Minister give any indication as to when the
Government will bring into effect those parts of the Victims and
Prisoners Act, passed just before Dissolution, that relate to the
licence conditions of IPPs and the term that they must serve on
licence before the sentence is discharged, and the matter is
related to executive release by the Lord Chancellor, and so
forth? All those elements relating to IPP prisoners were agreed
and passed in the Victims and Prisoners Act just a matter of
weeks ago.
6.00pm
Thirdly and finally, and slightly more vaguely, will the
Minister, as he takes this statutory instrument through—and he
mentioned the possibility of further legislation—consider whether
there is scope for bringing IPP prisoners within this approach,
and seeing that their release at greater pace, although not
necessarily in every case, can contribute to the Government's
objective here, which is to relieve the pressure on the prison
system? They should not be ruled out as a matter of course but
should be looked at on a sympathetic basis where that can be done
safely.
(LD)
We have all welcomed the Minister in three debates on three
successive sitting days, so he has been thrown in at the deep end
of parliamentary accountability. However, he has received some
pretty sound advice from all the preceding speeches, including in
the well-directed questions from the noble Lord, .
Today what we are faced with from a parliamentary accountability
point of view is not satisfactory. We know that the Government
are caught in a difficulty whereby they have had to deploy a
statutory instrument without it having gone to the Joint
Committee on Statutory Instruments, on which I have served. That
is a shame, because that committee and its excellent team of
advisers go through statutory instruments in great detail and
sometimes find mistakes. They occasionally find mistakes that
throw into question the validity of the instrument and the
ability to enforce it, so I hope that extreme and extra care has
gone into the drafting of this instrument, which is quite
complicated. For example, there are 54 excluded offences, and
many other complications affecting various categories of
prisoner. So we hope that it is looked at very carefully—and, in
a defect is found, we hope that the Government will come back at
a later stage with a revised instrument.
What we have today is not a policy but a response. The Minister
gave some indications of how policy might be developed, but we
are not there—we are not at that point. We are simply observing a
government response to a desperate crisis, which any incoming
Government would dread—well, it is happening. It is the result of
underinvestment and delayed investment in prison building over a
long period and the constant rise in the number and length of
custodial sentences, as well as the large rise, to which the
Minister referred, in the number of remand prisoners, which
itself is largely the result of the huge backlog in serious cases
coming to court, as part of the wider chaos that we find in our
criminal justice system. I ask the Minister: is it in fact the
case, as alleged in the press, that sentencing hearings for
prisoners on bail have been deliberately delayed to avoid further
sentences sending people into our already overcrowded jails?
We have a prison population that is three times the level it was
when I became a Member of Parliament. The noble Lord, , has referred to how that
contrasts with other European countries, and I share his concern
about the fact that it has happened and that it is so out of line
with how most countries view the same problems of crime that we
face. The announced prison building programme cannot solve the
problem, although it is needed. We have to remember that, when
the prison building programme that we have now was announced,
much of it was intended to replace unsuitable and inadequate
prison accommodation—not to add to the total stock but to replace
accommodation that should not continue to be used.
We have a prison system that cannot house its prisoners and
cannot rehabilitate them, and we have as a result a completely
unacceptable level of violence against prison staff as well as
prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
Nothing we are doing today will change this. We have to review
the trend of the ever-increasing use of custody. For that to
happen—here I repeat what I said last week—we need to strengthen
community sentencing and the services necessary to make it
effective. We also need to establish a measure of crime and its
seriousness which does not make custody the only means by which
society can assert its abhorrence of serious and persistent
crime. That is fundamental to the problem we have at the moment:
the only way society knows how to recognise and deal with crime,
as is reflected in the media and in ordinary conversation, is to
say that we are not going to put up with these dreadful crimes
and so we should put people in jail for longer, even if it is not
relevant to the rehabilitation of the offender when they are
eventually released. We have to face up to that problem, and that
is going to require real leadership, rather than party-political
leadership. The Minister has a background that makes him well
suited for this; I hope he is given the scope to carry out that
kind of leadership.
of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I am intervening just to ask a question. The Minister
used the word “stabilised” twice, I think, during his
presentation of this instrument—he is looking forward to a stage
when the Government can feel that the prison crisis has
stabilised. Can the Minister explain a little more of what he
means by the word “stabilised”? The point is this, as the noble
Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, made clear: we are sending
too many people to prison, and therefore one of the ways of
stabilising the problem is by addressing rigorously the overuse
of prison as a means of punishing crime. I am sure the Minister
is well-equipped to carry out that campaign.
The other feature of our present treatment of offenders,
particularly serious offenders, is the length of the prison term.
I was Lord Justice General in Scotland some years ago, when I had
the task of reviewing the tariffs to be imposed on discretionary
life prisoners. These are people who, unlike murderers, were
sentenced to life imprisonment because of the gravity of the
crime they had committed. The average tariff I was imposing in
line with what was the current practice then—this was about 20 or
30 years ago—was something like 11 years; now, it is way above
that, at 17 or 18 years, or more, and lengths of sentences are
going up into the 30s. In my time as Lord Justice General, such
lengths of sentences were quite unimaginable, and I am not sure
it is doing any good except to keep people in prison longer than
ever before. That is why the crisis has grown. There is a
fundamental problem that has to be addressed, and I urge the
Minister to explain what he means by “stabilise”. Perhaps the
Minister could also address more closely—not today, and not even
in writing to me, but later, in discussion with officials—how the
problem can be corrected, so that we do not find ourselves in two
years' time facing the same crisis we are facing today.
Beyond that, I commend the drafting of the regulation. I think a
great deal of thought has gone into the measure. It has been
carefully thought through and, as a means of dealing with the
crisis, it is exemplary. However, it is the underlying problem
that must be addressed, not the particular crisis itself.
(Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his appointment and wish him
well. I assure him that many people in the House will be anxious
to assist him, so that we can move away from the inevitable
decade-on-decade increase in the number of people in prison. When
the last Government went out, we had 87,000 people in jail, and
we now have 97,000 people in jail. I do not think there is any
point in pointing to any party-political basis; we should be
seeking to come together to take a longer view. I share precisely
the views expressed by the noble Lord, : when we look at what is
happening in Europe, why are we so different?
If the Netherlands has got empty spaces in its jails, why are we
not sending some prisoners there? If Denmark has got empty spaces
in its jails, why are we not sending some prisoners there? That
is not to say that I think we should be about sending prisoners
elsewhere; we should be about trying to get to the fundamentals
behind what happens with criminal acts, and looking then at how
we deal with people. We need to try to find a more civilised way
of handling many of the cases in which people need not go to
jail.
In particular, I get increasingly concerned about the problems we
encounter with mental health within jails. I know a number of
people working in jails from different angles, and the constant
complaint is that there are so many people there who should not
be in jail but who should in fact be cared for on a mental health
basis rather than being incarcerated.
I have a couple of questions there, including on whether we can
export people temporarily. I support the statutory instrument,
but I hope that the Minister might be able to say that it is high
time that we did not just have a review of the reasons why we
have our current problems but that we in fact have an all-party
approach to try to get a longer-term analysis of our fundamental
difficulties, and of what new and more civilised steps can be
taken. Then at least, stability could come from not increasing
from the present numbers when we review this in 10 years' time,
and within the Government's five-year period we might have a
proper analysis of the underlying causes and a real strategy
devised where we could all come together to work for a better
life in the future.
The (Con)
My Lords, I first thank the Minister, the noble Lord, , for explaining the purpose
of these regulations. As the House recalls, we had a repeat of
the Statement on prison capacity that my noble and learned friend
of Dirleton responded to
on behalf of His Majesty's Opposition. This has been a
fascinating debate, with, in fact, some great and fascinating
contributions from all around the House, including from the
Conservative Benches.
There are a number of matters that I would like to raise with the
noble Lord. In the repeat of the Statement last week, his noble
friend raised a very important point
relating to the pressures being put on local communities. As he
said, it poses for local communities
“the very real challenge of additional large numbers being
released[”.—[Official Report, 24/7/24; col.
513.]](/search/column?VolumeNumber=&ColumnNumber=513&House=2&ExternalId=37B8A04F-CC60-4D76-B75E-2417757F42E4)
As the Minister said himself, he had seen for himself people
leaving prison with no one to meet them and nowhere to live. If
this policy is to work, this will put further pressure on the
system, so the funds must be made available to ensure that a
decent start can be given to these individuals. Without doubt,
there will be a demand for more funding through DWP and MHCLG. I
wondered if the Minister has anything more to add on this
subject.
Until when will the new 40% release point be applied? To say that
it will apply until it is no longer needed, or until it is
reversed, says nothing. The Ministry of Justice has projections
of how many prisoners would be released earlier under this
measure; we are told about 5,000 in September and October, and
also an estimate of the incoming flow of prisoners. The
department must have a working assumption of how long the measure
will be needed. It would be good if the Minister could tell me
what that estimate is.
We were told last week that there will be a review at the
18-month point. Will the Minister confirm that the current plan
is for the release point to go back to 50% at that time? Will he
confirm that he will be able to report to Parliament immediately
if that plan changes? Notwithstanding what the Minister said on
the criteria to be set for ending the policy, would it not be
better that a sunset clause to the regulation was used, such that
the Government would have to come back to report to Parliament to
explain why a further period of release at the 40% mark is
required?
As the Minister said, offenders will be subject to strict
licensing conditions. Will these be more onerous than the licence
conditions to which they would have been subject if released at
the 50% mark? If so, how will they be different? Or will they be
the same licence conditions but just imposed at the 40% mark?
The Minister also noted that tags would be used where required.
We are told that the offenders can be ordered to wear electronic
tags and that curfews will be imposed where appropriate. Will all
prisoners released at the 40% mark be required to wear a tag, at
least until they reach the 50% mark? Will such prisoners also be
subject to a curfew for that period, or are we being told that
tags and curfews are available, which we know, but will not be
routinely imposed on this cohort?
Will the Minister be able to report to Parliament if any serious
crimes are committed for those released at the 40% mark? Will His
Majesty's Government confirm that there are no plans for any
further or earlier release of any other cohorts of prisoners?
This debate has been very useful. I look forward to hearing what
the Minister has to say in response.
6.15pm
(Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their valuable
contributions to this important debate, and I look forward to
answering as many questions as I can. I will of course go back
and look at Hansard, and if there is anything I have not
answered, I will endeavour to write. As noble Lords have already
pointed out, I have had quite a busy few days and I am learning
fast, so I ask your Lordships to please bear with me if I am not
quite as smooth as other noble Lords have been today.
I will start with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on recall. Recall
is used only when necessary to protect the public. I see no
reason to believe that it is being used inappropriately. This
week, I went to two prisons to meet the offender management units
to see how they were getting on with the important work they are
doing. While they were very busy, I got the distinct feeling that
they were on top of things and very much prepared for the hard
work.
The noble Lord, , mentioned remand. We are very
aware that the remand population has seen significant growth, and
it is a significant issue. It has grown from about 9,000 to
16,000 prisoners. However, making changes to the remand cohort in
a way that respects the individual decision by the judiciary will
take time to implement. Unfortunately, we do not have much
time.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Jones
of Moulsecoomb, the noble Lords, , and , and the noble
and learned Lord, of Craighead, talked about who
goes to prison. I thought I would mention the sentencing review
that we are planning. That will take place as soon as possible.
That will, I hope, be an opportunity for noble Lords to discuss
and debate where we are going on sentencing.
One point raised by a number of noble Lords was around IPP
prisoners. That is not something that is covered by this
instrument. If it is satisfactory, I will write to the noble
Lord, , with the exact detail,
because this is so new to me and I do not want to get anything
wrong at this early stage of my career in this House. IPP
prisoners is an area that troubles me deeply. I have been going
to prisons for over 20 years, and every time I go into an
establishment, I always try to sit in a cell and talk to a man or
a woman who is an IPP prisoner. In fact, I sat next to an IPP
prisoner on Thursday. They all have a different story. Most of
them suffer from multiple challenges; most of them feel lost;
many of them are institutionalised. We have a duty to help them
live a law-abiding life outside, but it is challenging. We are
making progress, and this is one of the areas I want to make
further progress on quickly. I assure noble Lords that it is at
the top of my in-tray every day.
On the subject of prison building, which the noble Lord, , talked about, it is important,
and we are committed to building new modern and safe prisons. For
me, one of the advantages of new prisons is that they have the
facilities required to help people gain skills and education, so
that when they are released they have the skills and confidence
that make them more attractive to an employer.
The noble and learned Lord, of Craighead, asked what I meant
by “stabilised”. Even though I have been going round prisons for
many years, I have been trying to remember when I last felt that
a prison was stable. It was probably the category D prisons, up
until the last year, where they often had spare capacity and you
felt that they were very much on the right side of panic.
However, where a prison is 99% full, it is very difficult for the
prison staff and probation staff to adequately educate and train,
and to have time for those quiet conversations on the wings
between prison officers and prisoners, which are sometimes very
important turning points in someone's life. I have worked
alongside many colleagues who have left prison, and very often
the story they tell me is that their lives were not turned around
by family or friends but by a kind prison officer who gave them
their time.
The noble Lord, , spoke about
mental health. We have a broad failure across many of our public
services, including the health service. One of the things that is
very important to me as I progress in this role is to support our
health professionals to work with our offenders, inside and
outside prison. These people have failed society but often
society has failed them too, and they often need support to
overcome their health problems, especially around addiction.
The noble Earl, , talked about the impact on
communities when people leave prison and how society will cope
with that. We are recruiting 1,000 extra probation officers;
although they will not be in place completely until March next
year, it is an important step. What we want to achieve is a
reduction in reoffending. To me, what is important from this job
is to help people not to reoffend, because that reduces crime, we
have fewer victims, it costs less money and it means fewer wasted
lives. The plan at the moment is for the release point to go to
40%, and when we are satisfied that the capacity problem is
resolved, it will go back to 50%, We will publish every quarter
an update on how this scheme is running. Not all prisoners
leaving prison will go on tag; it will depend on whether the
professionals deem it to be appropriate. As I said on Wednesday,
I will test one of the tags myself to see what it is like, and
will report back to noble Lords.
(Con)
My Lords, the Minister should make sure that it is not a sobriety
tag.
(Lab)
I assume that if it is, I will not be able to have a sherry
trifle, which is one of my favourite desserts.
To conclude, this statutory instrument is vital for addressing
the capacity crisis in our prisons. It will pull us back from the
brink of a total collapse of law and order in our country, which
would put the British people at risk—something we cannot
countenance. We should, however, be under no illusion: the
measure we have debated today is not a silver bullet for prison
capacity. It will not end this crisis and it is not the solution
for the longer term, but it is a measure that buys us the time
needed to take further steps to address the pressures in our
prisons and put the criminal justice system on a sustainable
footing, in turn providing greater protection to victims and the
public. It rightly brings to an end the short-term measures of
the previous Government that operated without due transparency,
proper scrutiny or the safeguards to protect the public that are
the heart of this Government's approach.
Before I close, I wish to extend some further thanks, building on
the remarks I made in my maiden speech in this place. As I said
then, those who work in our Prison and Probation Service work
every day with some of the most complex people, inside one of the
most complex systems. Managing a prison system at around 99%
capacity for an extended time will have been an extraordinary
challenge not just for those on the front line but for all the
partners in our criminal justice system, including civil servants
at the Ministry of Justice and those working in the third sector.
I therefore thank my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice and
His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service not just for the way
they have welcomed me into the department but for their committed
and largely unsung service to guiding us through this current
prison capacity challenge.
The last Government placed our criminal justice system and
prisons in crisis, but the legacy of this Government will be
different. It will see a prison system brought under control, a
Probation Service that keeps the public safe and enough prison
places to meet our needs—which will lead to having prisons we are
proud of, but also prisons, probation and other services working
together to break the cycle of the revolving door and reduce
reoffending. Today's measure is not the long-term solution—we are
being transparent about this—but it is the necessary first
step.
(GP)
Will the Minister respond, perhaps at a later date, to my
questions about drugs policy and the fact that this Government
did not release a report?
(Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness. I will write to her, because I am not
completely familiar with that and I would not like to get it
wrong.
Motion agreed.
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