Sentencing Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Committee stage
Monday 1st December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, explained very well some of the reasons why this group of amendments is so important. I note, as somebody who is a fan of rehabilitation—although I quite like the rebranding that has just been suggested—that the truth of the matter is that what passes for rehabilitation, certainly in prison, is often shoddy, not available or not up to scratch. By the way, that is not a criticism of the people trying to deliver it. It is for all sorts of reasons.

I am very keen that we think hard about what kind of rehabilitation is being offered in the community. I just cannot see how, even with a pledge to invest £700 million more into probation services, the Government can deliver what is in the Bill. This is part of the problem I have with some of the suggestions around rehabilitating people via community sentences. I am worried that rehabilitation and community sentences will be discredited if this goes wrong. The amendments are trying very hard to ensure compliance and that sentences are completed, and that the victims and the whole of the community and society understand what they are trying to do. That is why these amendments are crucial.

I want to state very clearly that community sentences are criminal sentences. They are not supposed to be a soft option. They have to be taken as stringently and seriously as if you put somebody in prison. If somebody is put in prison and they escape—however that might occur—we think that they are trying to escape justice. My concern is that, if we do not have the resources, or do not keep our eyes on ensuring that community sentences happen properly, that is escaping justice. Therefore, it has to be taken very seriously.

I have some concerns about Amendment 52 in relation to mandatory “healthy relationships” courses. I have some cynicism that the way to solve the problem of violence against women and girls is through education. I have a certain dread of the kind of excuse being, “Well, you know, I committed that offence because I didn’t know that consent was needed. I wouldn’t have done the rape if I’d been sent on a good course”. I hesitate to say this, but some people are violent against women and girls because they despise women and girls: it is not a question of having sent them on a well-resourced course.

I have heard an awful lot of excuses in recent years from people who say, “I wouldn’t be a sex offender if only this had happened”. Well, you would not have been a sex offender if you had not committed the offence of sexual assault. So I do not want this to be an excuse for letting those largely male perpetrators off the hook.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hamwee has spoken to our amendment, which would require the Secretary of State to carry out an assessment of the potential benefits of mandatory healthy relationship rehabilitation programmes for offenders sentenced to offences against women and girls. We have heard the Minister talk many times about the Government’s target of halving violence against women and girls during the course of the Parliament. That is a target we completely support.

The area of relationship education is a difficult one, but we have evidence that education in healthy relationships helps to address unhealthy preconceptions and outdated—what some used to call “chauvinistic”—attitudes in young men. Sometimes those attitudes spill into offending, and my noble friend was entirely right to talk of harmful sexual behaviours. She also spoke about what young men in particular see and experience online, and how they take encouragement from that to do sometimes unspeakable things.

The question of rehabilitation for sentenced offenders is whether education would address this. I accept that making such programmes mandatory is not easy, but doing so would or might emphasise their importance. I hear the cynicism expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, about education for healthy relationships, but we have seen how relationship education in schools encourages healthier attitudes among pupils and greater understanding among young people of the concept of consent, as against the concepts of violence and force. I suggest that, for offenders who commit these offences, education would have the same beneficial effect, particularly if it is combined with a sentence for the offender, whether that is a custodial sentence or a community order. An assessment of that beneficial effect would be entirely beneficial.

In a sense, of course, this is a probing amendment, because we encourage the Government to make the position clear. We hope they will adopt the spirit of the amendment in any event, and that the Minister will commit the Government to undertaking such an assessment of the place of healthy relationship education, but we note that the amendment is also supported by the Opposition Front Bench.

I turn to the rest of the group. Amendments 53 to 55 and 57 would impose extra directions to the probation officers and impose burdens on them as regards the nature of the arrangements they make for rehabilitative activity and the flexibility they have in adjusting those activities.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I appreciate that anything to discourage populism is a popular call in this House for some people. I just ask the noble Lord what the danger is apart from encouraging populism. When I put my name to that amendment, even though I did not speak on it in the end, some of the controversies around sentencing, crime, law and order, prison, and so on have been a failure to provide information. The noble Lord mentioned the grooming gangs, but the more information there is, the better. What is there to be frightened of? One does not have to draw the conclusion that any negative things will come from having more information. As these kinds of details have been hidden for so long, having them made available for the British public so that they can make their own decisions is something we should trust the British public with. The noble Lord is keen that we trust probation officers. I am keen that we also trust the public.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I too am keen that we should, generally speaking, trust the public. But Amendment 86 requires

“all offenders convicted and sentenced in the Crown Court or Magistrates’ courts”

to have their

“country of birth … nationality … ethnicity … immigration status, and … the offence(s) for which they were sentenced”

recorded, published and laid before Parliament. That could encourage the drawing of entirely the wrong conclusions by the British public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, before the Minister responds, I will make two apologies. The first is to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham; my noble friend Lady Hamwee tells me that I referred to him twice as the “noble Viscount, Lord Hogg”. The second is to my noble friend Lord Foster, because I referred to the points that he made on electronic monitoring as having been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. I apologise to them both.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I will join the trend. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, for calling him “Lord Sanderson” in my enthusiasm to agree with him. Misnaming is almost as bad as misgendering, but I hope he will let me off. I was glad to take credit for the very important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, about electronic tagging, because I agree with him.

I want to query the Minister now, rather than interrupting him later, about this group. There is something I do not understand. The group is focused largely on enforceability, yet in the previous group, the Minister claimed that these kinds of prohibitions were part of the punishment. He is right to suggest that these are punishments for those people—they are not in prison, but they are still being punished. But I do not find it easy to understand how these orders punish the individuals. Are they related to the crimes they committed? The example that the Minister gave earlier was that, as part of the punishment, someone will be prevented from going to a particular football match. I understand that, if someone supports Liverpool, it might be a punishment to watch them at the moment, never mind anything else.

How do the punishments get decided? There was the example that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, gave of the potential downside of saying that we will have a curfew and someone cannot attend their Gamblers Anonymous meeting. Also, if we are going to say that, as part of the punishment, someone cannot go to public gatherings, who decides which public gatherings are included? Some public gatherings are obviously morally good for people. Do we not want them to go to a political public gathering?

Can the Minister just clarify how it is decided which person in the community gets one of these orders and who makes a decision about who should be banned from a pub, football match, public gathering, political gathering or what have you?

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I hope that the devastating interventions that we have heard so far will make the Government rethink. They deserve the ridicule being poured on them. I just want to make two additional points.

Clause 113 completely undermines the Government’s idea that the Bill is all about enhancing workers’ rights by empowering them to have more control over their employment protections. When we scratch further, the real power is being accumulated by agencies and quangos; in this instance, it is the Secretary of State disguised as the fair work agency. It is an indication that workers are almost a stage army to the accumulation of power by the centre. I worry that the Government are using workers’ rights to colonise more aspects of people’s lives on the basis that the Government think that they can act on behalf of workers because they know better—that is outrageous. I want them to consider what this would mean for an individual woman at work. A female worker says no, but the Secretary of State comes up and says, “I don’t care; we don’t need your consent. You don’t want to go to a tribunal? We are not interested in what you as a woman think as a worker. We are going to act on your behalf because we know better than you”. It is an absolutely flagrant and outrageous attack on worker autonomy.

My other question relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Katz, said in Committee in response to a discussion about the overburdening of employment tribunals. He said that we will find that the fair work agency will pick up a lot of the work of the employment tribunals. The noble Lord implied that a lot of the work of the employment rights tribunals, which were clogged up, could be picked up by the agency and that fast-track routes would be used. I therefore cannot understand why, in this instance, the Government are piling more work on to the employment tribunals. They seem to be wallowing in this lawfare. If they do not want the Bill to be exposed as not in the interests of workers but more in the interests of quangos, this clause should be dropped before we come back.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I have not spoken on the Bill before and I apologise for entering these debates at this late stage. Indeed, I start by saying that I have considerable sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, to leave out Clause 113. As he and others have said, it would enable the Secretary of State to take proceedings without the consent of the worker concerned, even against that worker’s will, which I agree is a very odd position.

I have considerable hesitation in doubting the analysis of all those who have spoken before me, eminent lawyers and colleagues among them, but I am bound to say that I take issue with the categorisation of this clause as “bonkers”. The reason I take that view is because, on reflection, I can see circumstances where the Secretary of State might legitimately wish to take proceedings before an employment tribunal where the worker concerned did not want to do so. That might be because the worker was concerned about the risk of losing, or did not have the time, resources or simply the inclination to become involved in contested proceedings.