Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green (CB)]

My Lords, it is a source of pleasure and pride to follow the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Neate and to welcome her to this House. We have truly just heard a speech of clarity, authority and lived experience, and many of us will feel that her presence strengthens the best tradition of this house, bringing front-line public service insight into national policy and legislation.

Polly—my noble friend Lady Neate—comes here after decades at the sharpest edge of social policy. As chief exec of Shelter, she has made the case that housing is not a side issue but the foundation of stability in people’s lives. Before that, at Women’s Aid, she helped shift our understanding of domestic abuse from private tragedy to systemic coercion, requiring a systemic response.

Earlier still, at Action for Children, she worked with children and families in acute crisis, seeing how poverty, violence, housing insecurity and state systems collide in young lives. I worked with my noble friend when I was vice-chair of Shelter; she combines policy precision with an instinctive focus on what it feels like to live inside our systems. She will be a powerful voice here for those shaped by housing insecurity, abuse and contact with the care and justice system. I very much look forward to her future contributions and to working with her.

I note the wonderful contributions from all five noble Lords who have made their maiden speeches today. The breadth of experience that we have heard just from those five—the different perspectives, different experiences and different ways of seeing—is indicative of the strength of this House and what makes this place truly remarkable. It is of great regret to me that the wider community and population do not understand the richness that this place offers to our country.

Turning to prisons, the committee’s report shows a system under strain, where leadership, staffing and clarity of purpose will determine whether we reduce reoffending or simply manage crises at huge human and financial cost. I want to focus on the people who sit at the heart of that question—prison staff. Prison officers, like social workers, nurses and firefighters, do work that is complex, emotionally demanding and essential. Yet we persistently treat these roles as low status, modestly paid and peripheral to public life. The report highlights the recruitment and retention crisis, low morale and the reality of violence and trauma facing staff. We ask them not only to keep order but to help change lives, then we underinvest in those very people whom we expect to deliver that change. If we genuinely see prison staff as central to public protection and reducing reoffending, should that not be reflected not just in pay and training but in how their role is understood and valued across society?

Can the Minister say more about what the department is doing and what further steps it might take to raise public awareness of the importance of prison staff and the contribution that they make to public life? I am acutely aware that at the same time we face a profound labour market shift. We tell young people that the future—their future—lies in learning how to use AI, yet many white-collar pathways that shaped the aspirations of the next generation of workers are likely to contract. We are already seeing and experiencing that contraction. Large numbers of young people will face a more precarious landscape than we are ready to admit.

Here is the paradox. Sectors such as prisons, care, health and community safety urgently need capable people. This is work that AI will not replace, regardless of what Foucault may have fantasised about, yet we signal that success lies elsewhere. If we are serious about safer communities and reducing reoffending, we should be making careers in the Prison Service and allied public service roles high-status, well-paid, properly supported professions with clear pathways and recognition. This is not fall-back work; it is nation-building work.

This points to a seismic shift that we are facing not just in the prison sector but across the public sector. We need to start revaluing human relational work to align education and workforce policy with social need, and to see affordable housing as part of the infrastructure of prevention. If our public service staff do not live where they work, how can they connect with the communities that they are trying to serve? This is consistent with the report’s central argument: the system must be organised around reducing reoffending and protecting the public, not managing failure at scale.