Sarah Pochin MP: speeches

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Speeches

21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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Today I speak in favour of the eight amendments tabled by Reform UK. Simply put, the Bill is motivated by the desire to free up prison spaces, and not by what is the best way to administer justice. Its primary function is not the protection of the public, or the protection of victims of crime or abuse—in fact, it is the opposite. Clause 1 is about the presumption of suspension of a custodial sentence of 12 months or less. We proposed an amendment to remove clause 1, which effectively discourages the magistrates court from imposing a custodial sentence. There are circumstances when a custodial sentence of 12 months or less is entirely appropriate, and the clause is tying the hands of magistrates, who will be under pressure from the clerks not to impose a prison sentence. What does that mean for those found in possession of a bladed article, namely a knife—an offence that currently attracts a mandatory six-month prison sentence? With this presumption of suspension clause, is the Minister now suggesting that offenders who are found guilty of carrying a knife will now have their sentence automatically suspended? If so, what does this mean for knife crime on our streets and the protection of the public? Community sentence options are often limited due to defendants claiming anxiety and depression, meaning that unpaid work is not an option and that tagging may be limited. In addition, fines are often meaningless because so many defendants are claiming universal credit. Let me turn to clauses 18 and 19. We have tabled new clause 24, which would abolish the Sentencing Council all together. The Sentencing Council was introduced to give statutory guidance to the judiciary to avoid inconsistencies in sentencing decisions. However, we believe that its work has become prescriptive and politicised, as shown by clause 19. We live in an era of two-tier justice. Let us not forget that in March, the Sentencing Council proposed treating ethnic minority offenders more leniently than white offenders. The Justice Secretary had to step in and overrule the Sentencing Council in order to stop this madness. For these reasons, the Sentencing Council should be abolished and sentencing powers should lie solely at the discretion of judges.
21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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No, I will make some progress; I have given way a lot. Let me move on and make a point of clarification with respect to clauses 26, 27 and 28, which are on recall. The current system allows for fixed-term recall of 14 days for custodial sentences of less than 12 months and 28 days for custodial sentences of one to four years. Standard recall offenders serve the rest of their sentence. Can the Minister confirm that this Bill introduces FTR and SR of 56 days for all custodial sentences of less than four years, with the exception of terrorists, such that offenders who have committed serious crimes including assault, robbery and possession of knives or other offensive weapons could be out again in two months? That is not protecting the public. However, I welcome the fact that the presumption of 56 days’ recall does not apply for domestic violence offenders who have breached their licence conditions and gone on to reoffend. Clause 42 is about foreign criminals. I propose to replace the clause and to move new clause 25, which would apply an automatic deportation order to foreign criminals sentenced to at least six months’ imprisonment or a six-month community sentence. The Secretary of State wrote to Members of Parliament claiming that he had strengthened the ability of the Government to deport foreign criminals. He said in a letter that it will be the duty of the Home Secretary to deport foreign offenders who receive at least a 12-month custodial sentence, yet in the same letter he stated that “this is subject to several exceptions, including where to do so would be a breach of a person’s ECHR rights or the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention.” In other words, nothing will change and no one will get deported. Finally, new clause 26 would make an addition to the Bill referred to as “Criminal Cases Review (Public Petition)”. Under the new clause, if it appeared to any British citizen aged 18 or over that the sentencing of a person in the Crown court has been unduly lenient or harsh, that British citizen—the petitioner—may refer the case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission for it to review the sentence. There would mean that there would be a platform for defendants like Rhys McDonald and Chris Taggart in my constituency, who received an average of 30 months for an ill-advised tweet, to have their sentence appealed.
21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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We proposed an amendment to remove clause 20 all together. The clause proposes to reduce the time served of a custodial sentence from a half to a third in order to free up prison capacity. This means that dangerous criminals who have been locked up for some of the worst possible offences, including paedophiles, could be let back into the community after serving only a third of their sentence behind bars. Only the most serious offenders, including those convicted of rape, will serve half their sentences in jail, reduced from two thirds. [ Interruption. ]
21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Lady for the Eton example. I am sure that will resonate very well with my constituents in Runcorn.
21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady— [ Interruption . ]
21 Oct 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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I thank shadow Minister for supporting me on that point. I turn to clauses 24, 36 and 37 with respect to licences. These clauses all give powers to the Probation Service to reduce the length of a community order imposed by the judge or magistrate. The Probation Service is underfunded and overstretched already, and the real risk is that offenders will have their requirements reduced by probation officers in order to free up capacity in the service. The probation officer already has discretion on the number of days of rehabilitation required, and it is dangerous to give any more quasi-judicial power to the Probation Service.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I commend those who have signed the two petitions that bring this debate to Westminster Hall. In my constituency, 461 residents signed the petition to shut down the migrant hotels and deport illegal migrants, and 871 residents signed the petition to stop financial support for asylum seekers. That shows how fed up my residents, and people across the country, are with this issue. Make no mistake: it is the biggest issue facing this country at the moment. We talk about our proud history of accommodating and looking after asylum seekers—and that is true—but this is different. We are now facing an invasion, a national security issue and a national emergency. The current cost to the taxpayer of housing asylum seekers in hotels is estimated to be £6 million a day. That figure is probably way below what it actually costs us. It is well publicised that asylum seekers in these hotels are receiving not only free accommodation, but free food in three meals a day, free pocket money, free cinema tickets, free—in my constituency of Runcorn and Helsby—driving lessons, free mobile phones and free anything else.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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I will not. We know that the Americans are despairing at our asylum seeker policies, and are watching our country being overrun. The only people who do not seem concerned are the Government. How does this make us look to the world, and how does it make our loyal British citizens feel? Well, I will tell hon. Members: it makes us look weak. It makes us look like we do not put the British people first, and that has to change. The British people have had enough of seeing their hard-earned money being spent on people who have no right to be here. Financial assistance to these illegal migrants must stop. All illegal migrants currently in this country need to be deported. That is the starting principle of Reform policy.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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No, I am going to continue. We have to stop the incentives to come to this country. We need to protect the public, particularly women and girls, from these sexually active young men currently free to roam our streets.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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I shall not. We have all seen pictures of asylum seekers hanging out of windows, laughing at the peaceful protests below. This leaves a sour taste in the mouth of the British taxpayer. We know that other European countries are laughing at us with our ridiculously generous asylum policy, and waving asylum seekers through to our shores.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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No, I will not rule out any possible policy.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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I will.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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No, I am going to continue; I have given way once. Anyone who has come to this country illegally will never be entitled to claim asylum here again.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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Now he is twisting things.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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I will make a bit of progress. The immediate action needs to be that all these hotels are closed to illegal migrants, and that they are moved out of the community into holding centres to be processed and sent home. The conditions in which they are held in these processing centres will be humane but not luxurious. There will be no free tickets to theme parks and no free trips out into the community. I had an asylum hotel—the Daresbury hotel—in my constituency. My campaign in the recent by-election saw the hotel eventually shut down, but the implications of shutting the hotels are that these illegal migrants are dispersed in houses of multiple occupancy in our communities. In Runcorn, we have approximately 900 illegal migrants in 80 HMOs that we know about. Once in those HMOs, they are lost to the authorities, yet still live free at the taxpayers’ expense.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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No, I am nearly finished. We need to prioritise our own citizens and stop this betrayal of our culture and our country. To finish, I would like to make this observation. The Home Office has just put out a contract to tender for asylum support and accommodation services to run from 2029 to 2036, so clearly, the Government have no plans to stop these hotels and are, in fact, facilitating them. The Minister can shake his head, but it is there online.
20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source
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I accept that we have to start doing something radical that sends a message, will stop people coming to this country, and will stop the pull factors that send people to our shores.
15 Oct 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate. I will speak about some of my experiences as a magistrate for 20 years in Cheshire. I am sure many think of Cheshire as a sleepy county, but statistics show that knife crime increased there by 7% year on year from March 2024 to March 2025, which may surprise some. I will take time to look into that with my chief constable. Over my 20 years in court, I heard so many reasons—in fact, excuses—for why defendants might have been carrying knives at the time of the incident or when the police caught up with them. Those ranged from “I forgot it was in my pocket” to “I needed it for work”—that was always a standard one, no matter what they actually did for work. Today, there is a mandatory six-month custodial sentence for anyone caught carrying a knife in the community, but the fact is that magistrates often do not enforce it after listening to and accepting the mitigating factors put forward by the solicitor on behalf of the defendant. Sometimes, a suspended sentence might be given, but the point is that this is soft justice, and I have seen it time and again. The courts must get tougher on doing what they say they will do—doing what we ask them to do—and enforce that custodial sentence, because only by enforcing the custodial sentence will the message start to get through. I would say that the mandatory six-month sentence is not currently a deterrent, because people are not afraid of going to court. That is an issue for people like us who set policy.
15 Oct 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source
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My point is that if stop and search is working, we will eventually get to a point where knives are found less often. That is the measure of success. We as politicians need to give our courts and our police the power to have a zero-tolerance approach to stop and search. The police need to have the confidence to carry out stop and search without fear of criticism. They need to be given funding to carry out thorough intelligence work on drug gangs, and they are doing an incredible job on the county lines operations that are now overtaking our society. However, they need to be given more funding for that work. The courts also need to be given the funding and resource to enact swift justice. Clearly, we also need education in schools and the community initiatives we have talked about. All of this is important, all of this is a package, but it starts at the top. It starts with us.
15 Oct 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source
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Clearly, at the moment, the threat of a custodial sentence is not the deterrent that it has to be, which is an important point. The Sentencing Bill, which will have its next stage on Tuesday, will take away the power of magistrates courts to hand down custodial sentences of less than 12 months. That is a big issue, but I will talk about it on Tuesday. Finally, it is important for all of us, as politicians, to remember that David Amess was brutally stabbed and killed four years ago today. What we have talked about this morning does not touch on the extremists and the nutcases who are out there in society, and from whom we are all under threat. I acknowledge that today is the four-year anniversary, and I urge everyone to take the utmost care when we are out in our communities.
15 Oct 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source
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I will make a little progress, if that is all right. My only observation about stop and search is that it has an effect, and I believe very strongly that stop and search needs to be brought back with absolutely zero tolerance. We need to support the police in putting aside any worry about being accused of being racist or of targeting particular groups in particular communities, because these policies work in taking knives off the street.
15 Oct 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source
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Let me make a little progress, sorry. The other point about stop and search is that the police, and indeed politicians, should not congratulate themselves on how many knives are found through stop and search; we and the police should congratulate ourselves on how many knives are not found when stop and search is used to its maximum power, because that is the measure of success. I now come on to the point about why so many young men carry knives, and it is generally young men who carry knives. Again, over the years of my experience, I have seen the fear that young men often have—sadly, sometimes when they are going to school. People have said to me that they felt threatened at school, so they took knives into school. Of course, this also affects older men out in the community. There is a difference between these two groups, and it is a problem for magistrates. There is a difference between a young man, a youth, saying that they were frightened to go into school without a knife, and an older man going to a pub with a knife in his pocket. This is an interesting issue for magistrates, because magistrates need to have some insight into people’s lives. We have heard talk this morning about role models and that type of thing. It is a huge problem that we never see the parents when these young men are in court. The other thing is the problem of drug gangs and county lines, which we deal with all the time as magistrates. That culture on our streets is feeding this knife crime, and it is not just in cities any more. It is all over the counties, with young people—and they are often very young—carrying knives because they are drug runners.
14 Oct 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles · Hansard source
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Does the Secretary of State agree that this Government’s continued hounding of our brave Northern Ireland veterans—many of whom should be enjoying well-earned retirement after their loyal service to the British Government, not living in fear of prosecution for simply following orders—is nothing short of shameful?
16 Sept 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Member—I was going to call him an hon. Friend, but I am not sure that is appropriate—and, yes, I could do that, but I think all Members know Reform’s policies on building prisons. [Hon. Members: “No, we do not.”] Let me finish my speech. The Bill proposes increased powers for the Probation Service such that it could shorten the length of a community order. It is entirely inappropriate for the Probation Service to be able to alter the sentence given by a magistrate or a judge. All this is open to abuse, and it means that the already stretched Probation Service can release convicted criminals from its books to free up capacity, rather than because rehabilitation or punishment has been successfully completed. The Bill is purposely vague and open to interpretation. It is not tough enough, and it does not address the problems our judicial system is facing. For that reason, I will not be supporting it.
16 Sept 2025 · Sentencing Bill · Hansard source
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I was a magistrate for 20 years, so I hope that I speak with some authority and have something to contribute on Second Reading. This Bill is based on recommendations in the recent Gauke review, which falls woefully short of addressing the many concerns that the British people have about the current judicial system. Worse still, it does nothing to reverse the current trend for woke justice, and enables the further politicisation of our once great judicial system. The left will describe the Bill as progressive, but in fact it is unrealistic, requires vast amounts of investment and funding for the Probation Service, and will take years to implement, and in the meantime it puts the public at risk. The Bill makes whole life orders mandatory for certain types of murder, but does not specify which types of murder. It allows for “special sentences for offenders of particular concern” to be imposed for rape and certain other serious sexual offences, without giving any explanation of what that actually means. The British people want to know that life means life—that murderers, terrorists, rapists, hate preachers and paedophiles will be sent to prison and never allowed out to threaten the safety of the British people again, that they will face harsh conditions in prison, and that prison is punishment, not a soft option. The Bill does nothing to defend our democracy and end the era of two-tier justice in this country, where free speech is a crime punishable by a more severe sentence than sexual assaults or paedophilia. It enables the continued facilitation of the special treatment of defendants according to their racial, cultural or religious identity.

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