Shabana Mahmood MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  I can confirm that all sex offences of all types are excluded from the SDS40 measures.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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 10 7 ). 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 2 5 April 2025, and to be printed (Bill 52 ).

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 17 Oct 2024 · Criminal Justice System: Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 17 Oct 2024 · Criminal Justice System: Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 17 Oct 2024 · Criminal Justice System: Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.

• 17 Oct 2024 · Criminal Justice System: Capacity · Hansard source

  More

  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.