Nicholas Dakin MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 3 Jun 2025 · Female Offenders · Hansard source

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  Every week I get a report of the number of girls in our youth estate, so I am monitoring it. There are no girls in a YOI, and there have not been since the girl who was in a YOI moved out soon after we came into government.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Female Offenders · Hansard source

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  Yes, the Government will look further at those proposals. The Women’s Justice Board has been created to do exactly that sort of work, and we also have an excellent Victims Minister in my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones).

• 3 Jun 2025 · Female Offenders · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has had a preview of this answer! This Government’s plan to support women is clear and ambitious. The aim is to reduce the number of women going to prison. Our Women’s Justice Board will support that. The independent sentencing review’s recommendations on short, deferred and suspended sentences for women, which we have accepted in principle, will reduce the number of women in prison. We have also taken decisive action by immediately accepting Susannah Hancock’s recommendation no longer to place women in young offenders institutions.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Community Accommodation Service: Tier 3 · Hansard source

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  We inherited a system in which far too many people leave prison with no fixed address. Individuals in community accommodation service tier 3 are risk-assessed by probation and subject to ongoing monitoring. Suppliers work closely with probation to deal robustly with any behavioural concerns posed by residents.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Community Accommodation Service: Tier 3 · Hansard source

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  It is important that the Probation Service deals with any concerns promptly and effectively. The Department wrote to the hon. Lady on 20 April with further details in relation to her concerns, and Thanet House was withdrawn from the scheme on 20 May.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. We respect each other, and I respect very much that you are standing up for Parliament, which is exactly the right thing to do. I applaud that.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, I hear your words very clearly. I very much respect the role of Parliament and I am pleased to be here today to follow up the written ministerial statement that was laid yesterday by the Lord Chancellor.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am sorry for any misinformation that I have given in trying to respond.

• 15 May 2025 · Speaker’s Statement: Ministerial Code · Hansard source

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  I will certainly apologise, Mr Speaker. I was not trying to take advantage. Clearly, it also took the action of the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), laying an urgent question. That is how Parliament works, and rightly so.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  The Lord Chancellor laid a written ministerial statement yesterday, the background to which are the changes around fixed-term recall in the light of the prison capacity challenges that the Government face. When we were elected almost a year ago, we inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse. Although we took immediate action to prevent the catastrophe, prisons continue to be perilously close to filling up entirely. Last December we published a long-term building strategy, setting out our aim to open up 14,000 prison places by 2031. That is the largest expansion of the prison estate since the Victorians. We have already committed £2.3 billion to prison expansion, and since taking office we have delivered 2,400 new places. We also commissioned the independent sentencing review, which will report shortly. The sentencing review will hopefully offer us a path to ending the capacity crisis in our prisons for good, but the impact of sentencing reforms will not be felt before next spring. On our current trajectory, we will hit zero capacity in our prisons in November—we cannot allow that to happen. That is why we have announced our intention to lay a fixed-term recall statutory instrument that will mean that those serving sentences of between one and four years can only be returned to prison for a fixed 28-day period. The measure builds on previous legislation, introduced by the last Government, that mandated 14-day recalls for those serving sentences of under a year. To be clear, higher-risk offenders have been exempted from that change. If further information relating to an offender’s risk is received after they have been recalled which means they are no longer considered suitable for fixed-term recall, they may be detained for longer on a standard recall if that is assessed as necessary.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  No, it is not. This is about people who have already served their sentence in prison; they are out in the community. If they breach a condition of their licence, they are returned to prison. The hon. Gentleman might as well ask why the Government he supported did not take any of the measures that he mentions. Our Government inherited the mess that his Government left us, and we are taking decisions to address the unconscionable threat of having a prison system that is not able to lock up dangerous people.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  I have made clear the exceptions that apply to this tight, fixed-term recall alteration. The management of people in the community will be risk-assessed, as always. If the view is that a different approach needs to be taken, it will be taken.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  Since taking office, we have deported over 1,800 foreign national offenders in custody, securing their early removal from our prisons—15% higher than in the previous 12 months. We have just announced 110,000 court sitting days, which is the highest level for a very long time. To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s specific questions, we will exclude anyone serving more than four years in prison; all those convicted of a terrorist or national security crime; and those who are subject to higher levels of risk management by multiple agencies where the police and the Prison and Probation Service work together, which includes certain sexual and violent offenders, including many domestic abusers. If there are ongoing concerns about the risk posed by an offender who is due to be released after the 28-day period, frontline workers can apply additional licence conditions to manage that. If further information related to an offender’s risk is received after they have been recalled, meaning that they are no longer considered suitable for fixed-term recall, they may be detained for longer on a standard recall, if that is assessed as necessary by the HMPPS public protection team. We know how important it is that victims are kept informed. All those eligible for the victim contact scheme will be notified about an offender’s release and will have the opportunity to make representations about victim-related licence conditions. Although there are certain exclusions for serious offenders, changing recalls for fixed-term offenders is necessary. It would be even worse to run out of space, which at this stage would mean the managed breakdown of the criminal justice system. The Lord Chancellor said rightly that that would be unconscionable. No Government should leave that challenge as a legacy to their successors, as the right hon. Gentleman’s Government did.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  We are committed to getting this right. The early release scheme that the previous Government put in place did not have the same exceptions as our early release scheme did for the sort of offenders that the hon. Gentleman draws attention to, but these matters are very difficult. The most important thing is ensuring that we have a criminal justice system that works. We need to be able to lock up dangerous people, and those who do really bad things. When we came into government, the situation was that we might not be able to maintain that ability. We have had to take actions that we would far rather not take in order to keep the system going.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  We are improving the prison estate and investing in probation, and there will also be actions coming forward from the independent sentencing review. I agree with everything my hon. Friend said.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  Anybody subject to a fixed-term recall will be recalled for 28 days, and if their risk is assessed as greater, they will be transferred to a standard recall. The reality is that anybody affected by this has already served their time in prison; they are on licence, being properly monitored and effectively managed by the Probation Service.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right to remind the House of the chaos and turmoil that the Conservatives applied to our very important Probation Service when they were in government. We are putting probation back together. We have already brought 1,000 new probation officers on board, and we are committed to a further 1,300 in the coming year.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  I certainly hope that all those things will be looked at by the independent sentencing review. The mandating of the 14-day fixed-term release was a measure taken by the previous Government. We are extending that to 28 days for sentences of up to four years because of the situation that we face, to ensure that we do not run out of prison places in the interim.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is exactly right to point to that planning application going forward. It is excellent news, and shows that we are cracking on with the job.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Victims and Courts Bill is about to go through Parliament, and that is the sort of issue that we will look at during the Bill’s passage.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  We speak to the Victims’ Commissioner regularly; the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), is speaking to them later today.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend points out the actions that we must take to address the challenges that we face in the system, and to make the system work better for victims and protect the public.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right: the recall population has doubled in just seven years and we need to address that. The independent sentencing review will report shortly, and I hope that there will be recommendations to which we can respond in that report.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  It is clear that tagging technology has huge potential. A recent study has shown a 20% reduction in reoffending by offenders wearing curfew tags, but my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to concerns about the contract. Serco’s performance is improving, but it is still not acceptable. The reporting in the “Dispatches” programme was from last year, when we knew that there were serious issues, and we issued financial penalties to Serco, which was given the contract by the previous Government. If Serco’s performance drops again, all options will remain on the table.

• 15 May 2025 · Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member will know that his colleague, the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), is working closely with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), on getting things right for victims. That is something we take very seriously, and it needs to be done properly, with victims, in order to get it right. I hope that the independent sentencing review report will contain things that give us confidence about moving forward and about the way we work with victims.