Sentencing Bill

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I am a great supporter of this Bill, and I also believe in tough community sentences. I think they are essential if we are to keep people out of prison. But I have to say that on this issue I do not see any positive point arising out of this clause. In my experience of working with probation officers—a long time ago, but I dare say they are not that different now than they were when I was in practice—I cannot see the likelihood of any probation officer wanting to do this and thinking that it was helpful in terms of making sure that his or her clients behave themselves in future. I think this is an excellent Bill, but I do not think this clause should be part of it.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. The powers in this Bill currently propose that probation officers will have the power to publish offenders’ names and photographs alongside details of their unpaid work. The Government rightly argue that there is a need to increase the public visibility of sentences being carried out and allow people to see that justice is being done. I would go further and say that it is vital that those who are responsible for sentencing have greater confidence in community sentences.

I am currently chair of your Lordships’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee, but before I took over, my noble friend Lady Hamwee was the chair of that committee, and her committee produced an excellent report, Cutting Crime: Better Community Sentences. That made it very clear that over a long period of time community sentences had declined, not least during the upheaval, as we might call it, of the Probation Service; nevertheless, there was a continued decline. When it tried to analyse why that was, it found that it was in part because sentencers had lost confidence in community sentences. The mood was, “We simply don’t think that the orders we’re imposing will actually be enforced”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I was very glad to sign this amendment, and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness both for having spotted it and for introducing it so clearly.

A few minutes ago, the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, used a phrase about justice not keeping pace with society. This is an example of that. It seems to me to be a hangover almost from the Victorian age. It is a cruelty to keep people in detention when they are actually vulnerable and need support. They are very often people among whose problems are mental ill-health; they just happen to have more vulnerabilities and problems than people who will fall within the Mental Health Bill.

“For their own protection” seems to me to be a misnomer. The reality is that this can make their condition worse. Some years ago, the Joint Committee on Human Rights conducted an inquiry on detention, which in part covered this issue. The stories we heard were frankly horrifying. This is not the time of night to go into them—but this is an area where we should really ensure that justice keeps up with and leads society.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 147. Noble Lords will be well aware that, in earlier debates, I have argued that what we do—whether it is for a custodial or non-custodial sentence—is of course about punishment but should also be about taking steps to reduce reoffending. I have therefore argued that either the police or the Probation Service must put in place measures to help with that, which would include things such as education, skills, and also measures to help people with drug, alcohol, and—as I have added—gambling disorders. We have had those debates already.

However, in today’s debate, I have mentioned the fact that something like 20% of people in prison are on remand, awaiting sentencing. As a result of the huge backlog in the Crown Courts, which I have also mentioned, it is a fact that many of those on remand will be in prison awaiting sentencing for quite a long time. So, it seemed to me perfectly reasonable that, while they are in prison, there should be opportunities that might help them in later life anyway, in terms of the same sorts of measures. This amendment very simply says that those who are in prison on remand should have made available to them the same level of provision that is provided for prisoners after sentencing. It is as simple as that, it seems to be common sense and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, turning first to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I must say from the outset that we on these Benches cannot support it. The power to remand a person in custody for their own protection—or, in the case of a child or young person, for their own welfare—is not one that the courts use lightly. It is already tightly circumscribed and deployed only where the alternative would expose an extremely vulnerable individual to serious harm.

To remove that safeguard entirely would be a mistake. There are rare, but very real, occasions when a defendant’s personal circumstances, exploitation by criminal gangs or acute safeguarding concerns mean that the only safe option, in the immediate term, is to keep them in secure accommodation. That judgment, made by a court on evidence and subject to challenge, is not one that we believe Parliament should now deprive them of. Where children are concerned, the imperative is even stronger. The court’s paramount concern must be people’s welfare, and removing this power risks leaving young people unprotected in precisely those situations where intervention is most vital. For these reasons, we cannot support Amendment 140.

We strongly support the principle underlying Amendment 147 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster. Far too many people spend far too long in remand—months and, sometimes, well over a year—awaiting trial or sentence. For all practical purposes, they experience incarceration in the same way as sentenced prisoners. They are deprived of liberty, separated from their families and often held in conditions indistinguishable from the sentenced estate. Yet those in remand do not have the same access to rehabilitative programmes, education, therapy or other forms of support that are routinely offered post sentence.

That is increasingly difficult to justify, particularly given that time spent on remand is overwhelmingly treated as time served for the purposes of the ultimate custodial sentence. If we accept that remand can form a significant part of an individual’s total period in custody, it cannot be right that this is, in effect, dead time, in which they are able neither to progress their rehabilitation nor to address the issues that may have contributed to their offending behaviour.

Therefore, the amendment proposed by the noble Lord is a valuable contribution to a discussion that is long overdue. It does not prejudge the precise mechanisms or impose unworkable obligations on overstretched services, but it rightly challenges us to consider whether the current disparity is effective or conducive to reducing reoffending. The Government should engage seriously with the spirit of these proposals.

Taken together, the amendments highlight two themes that run throughout our debates on the Bill: the need to protect the vulnerable and the need to ensure that custody, whether pre or post sentence, serves a constructive purpose. I hope that the Minister will commit to further work in this area, and I look forward to his response.