Prison and Probation Service

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Farmer on introducing this debate and thank him for doing so with his usual calmness and analysis. Every time he speaks on this subject—and he is a renowned expert—the House listens with great care, and we did so again today.

I also welcome and congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Leveson, both on his arrival here and on his maiden speech. He should not feel in the least bit embarrassed about waiting only two or three days after his introduction before addressing the House. He should have done so on the first day, and on the second and on the third, and I hope that he will on many days after this because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, so correctly pointed out, he was a judge and will be a Member of this House who will provide great wisdom and analysis and a great sense of justice on anything to which he brings his mind to bear.

Whilst I have them sitting there, I want to thank both those noble and learned Lords for helping me, just over 16 years ago, with the introduction of the deferred prosecution agreement. They, as successor Presidents of the Queen’s Bench Division, assisted me in my political guise, with them in their judges’ role, to bring that criminal justice tool into fruition. It seems a little strange that, when I last appeared in front of the then Sir Brian Leveson, when he was sitting in court, he was about 20 feet above me; the layout of this Chamber allows me to be 10 feet above him. I shall savour that.

As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, mentioned a little while ago, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House has produced a report on the state of our prisons and, to some extent, it mirrored the report made by the House of Commons Justice Committee. It is fair to say that neither report was complimentary about what they had looked into and found. Equally, it is fair to say that nor did they say anything that we did not already know before. Until prisons become a politically important subject of real and regular interest to Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State for Justice, very little can be achieved, despite the hard work of junior Ministers in the other place and on the Front Bench here.

Now, I am a cracked record in human form: for years, I have been complaining about the state of our prison estate, what we do to improve the lives and prospects of those in prison, and the provision of education and employment opportunities for those in and those about to leave prison. We recycle offenders on an alarming scale, into and out of prison and then back again. The reoffending rate varies marginally from time to time, but the general picture is deeply depressing.

For a hard-pressed prison governor, a good day is when nothing happens. It is when no one—and by that I mean both prison staff and prisoners themselves—dies and no one gets stabbed or punched; the infrastructure of the prison functions; the movement of people from the accommodation wings to the places where out-of-cell activities are supposed to happen takes place without incident and on time; no one throws drugs over the walls or flies them in by drone; and the provision of food and medical supplies is efficiently administered and delivered without mishap. That is a good day, but they are very rare.

Sadly, there are not many good days for prison governors, nor for their staff or for the prisoners and, as I say, this is not a new state of affairs; it will continue, as it has done for decades, under both Labour and Conservative Governments, and it will get even worse as we overcrowd the prisons and create or permit the continuance of squalid and uncivilised living and working conditions within them. They are hopeless places, in so many respects.

When I was a Member of Parliament, I once said to a local journalist that obviously prisons should have walls, both to keep the prisoners in and to keep the public out. But those walls should have large windows in them, so the public could see into the prisons and know what is being done on their behalf, and the prisoners could also see out, so they could see there was a community out there that would welcome them back if they were rehabilitated, if they could learn to read and write, if they could get off drugs and if they could become social, employable beings. The local journalist looked at me and said, “You clearly haven’t thought of the public expenditure implications of building all those windows”. I think he was being serious, which is rather depressing.

I suffer from analysis paralysis, and I accept that reciting what is wrong is easy; doing something about it seems to be impossible. This scandalous injustice must stop. The tiresome blame game played by successive Governments is unproductive and does us no credit, still less achieves anything. I have recently written to the new Prime Minister and I gave a copy to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Lemos. I hope that he has read it and I am sure he has; he probably keeps it by his bed and is setting it to music.

We do not need, as the justice unions have indicated today in their statement, a royal commission to investigate our prisons and to make robust recommendations. We know what is wrong: what we require is a Government to do something about it. We need determined action, led by a Prime Minister and a Secretary of State who are politically motivated and able to command the system that they oversee to do what is required. Everybody who has spoken has indicated what is required; it just requires leadership and action. I urge the Minister to run round to No. 10 this evening and say that he is ready for action.

IPP Prisoners: Recall System

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Garnier]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the recall system for prisoners released on licence serving indeterminate sentences for public protection.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Lord Chancellor has announced that we will bring forward legislation to end the IPP sentence once and for all by the end of this Parliament. In the meantime, HMPPS has strengthened safeguards around recall decisions, improved quality assurance, streamlined recall processes and expanded the use of risk-assessed recall reviews to support swifter re-releases where it is safe to do so.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, it was interesting to hear what the Minister had to say. Earlier this year, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and I studied about 80 sets of IPP recall papers, provided to us by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. Many of the decisions were poorly reasoned or plainly irrational and had nothing to do with public safety. Does the Minister agree that recall should not be used lazily and defensively and only when it is in the interests of justice?

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

Of course, recall should be used the interests of justice and not lazily, but I have to say to the noble and learned Lord that recall remains a vital public protection measure and that safeguards and oversight have been strengthened for IPP cases, partly as a result of his work. There has been a 31% decrease in IPP recalls in 2025 compared with 2024. All IPP licence recall decisions are now agreed by senior HMPPS decision-makers precisely to mitigate the point that the noble and learned Lord makes.

Criminal Justice Reform

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest. I was the lead non-executive director and chaired the agency board of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service until March 2025. Last week the Lord Chancellor set out in the other place changes to the implementation of the Sentencing Act 2026 to strike a better balance between protecting prison capacity and protecting the public from dangerous offenders. As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, indicated, the Government recognise the uncertainty that victims have faced over the summer. When they are told that an offender may be released earlier than they expected, I have no doubt at all that it can be extremely distressing. I will say bit more about how we propose to support, and are already supporting, victims in a moment.

Victim liaison officers will be engaging directly with victims opted in to the victim contact scheme, which this Government have expanded in recent legislation, so that they understand how their individual cases are affected. We are also attempting to trace victims who are not in the scheme. This is backed by £18.9 million for victim support, including a dedicated helpline and specialist support for victims of violence against women and girls. The Government recognise that victims’ concerns are increased by uncertainty. The whole purpose of making these changes to the exemptions is because we have listened to victims. That is the basis on which we are proposing to make these changes. It is why the Government were determined to look again at these changes, which never applied to some of the most serious violent and sexual offences or life sentences.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that of course I remember the debates on the Sentencing Bill. I was here throughout. I suppose I will not be the first or the last Minister to say that we are doing something different from the things I objected to in the past. We have now, rightly, also excluded rape, serious child sex and grooming offences, manslaughter, other unlawful killing offences, and indecent assault, which had been used to prosecute historic child sex abuse. We acknowledge the public concern. That is why the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor have initiated these changes and that is why we have made the announcement. We have listened to victims—that is why we are doing these things—and we want to continue to do that.

On the point that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, made about commencement, the Act has already been commenced. Primary legislation is not needed in the short term, but we will pursue it when parliamentary time allows. We must, however, continue to be honest about why these reforms were introduced. When we took office in 2024, prisons were regularly at 99% of their capacity. Running out of places risked paralysing the criminal justice system and we acted to avert that crisis, but prisons continue to operate near their limit.

I have been involved with the subject for many years now. This is not a new problem. This goes back to 2022. I have discussed it—

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

It goes back beyond that.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

Yes, it goes back beyond that, but the intensity has not gone away. The answer cannot be a succession of emergency measures. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said the Government had introduced various emergency measures. Well, we needed to, because the previous Government refused to act. Parliament legislated through the Sentencing Act for a sustainable model in which some offenders spend less of their sentence in custody, depending on their behaviour, before continuing to serve their sentence under intensive supervision in the community.

Much of the debate about the changes we are making to the Sentencing Act has simply not taken account of the changes we are making in the supervision arrangements. I am happy to say more if noble Lords want to ask me, but it is a different proposition that is now being proposed for the second third of the earned progression model by probation staff. Probation staff do an extraordinarily difficult job protecting the public, and I want to pay tribute to them. It is easy to be critical of both prison and probation staff, but I regard them as heroic and doing jobs that many of us would find almost unconscionable.

Working closely with the police, we have given them a much more robust range of measures to manage offenders outside prison, and we are building a very different Probation Service. These measures can include curfews, exclusion zones and, for the most serious sexual and violent offenders, new restriction zones, which will tightly constrain their movements, with serious breaches of these conditions potentially resulting in recall to prison. The purpose of probation, as we are now conceiving and structuring it, is about controlling people’s movement, knowing where people are and being able to take action. We are making it possible for probation officers to know where tagged offenders are in real time. That has not been possible before, so it is a really big change.

In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, we recognise the pressure that probation already faces, and now we are asking it to do more. That is why, as he noted, we have invested an additional £700 million in probation and community services by the end of the sentencing review period. We have also hired 2,300 more trainee probation officers. The recruitment of new probation officers has gone well, and we plan to bring on board 1,300 more by March 2027.

We have made substantial progress on productivity in probation through the introduction of Justice Transcribe, and we have reduced probation officer case loads by 25%. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Timpson for his work in this area; he was relentless in his focus on improving probation. I think he is still in his place—yes, he is. I am delighted to have him as my guardian angel on my shoulder.

I said earlier that we cannot allow our prisons to return to the cliff edge that we faced in 2024. Changes to the implementation of the Sentencing Act inevitably have an effect on prison capacity, and we have a duty to ensure that there is enough space in prisons to meet demand. The Lord Chancellor has therefore brought forward £110 million to convert existing prison spaces into cells. We are also accelerating current builds and securing sites for future prisons. This will help us to reach our ambitious target of creating 14,000 additional prison places by 2021, of which 3,200 have already been delivered.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, asked me about planning difficulties and so on. I am happy to give him more detail later, but we have made a good deal of progress on acquiring land and have speeded up the planning process.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, we are also freeing up capacity by accelerating the removal of foreign national offenders: I am sure I will come back to that. We will shortly commence a power under the Sentencing Act allowing eligible offenders to be removed immediately after sentencing. That will not include dangerous offenders.

My time is up, but I want to address the points that were made about IPP. This is a very significant change. We can talk at greater length on noble Lords’ questions about how we are going to go about this, but taking those sentences off the statute book is an absolute priority and would still be an absolute priority even if the prisons were half empty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend and pay tribute to him for the work that he has done, along with many other noble Lords on all sides of the House, to move us forward on the question of IPPs and how we regularise the situation. I should reinforce this: it goes without saying that we are not going to release people the Government or Parole Board think are dangerous, and we will put in place arrangements to make sure that we do not.

On recall specifically, we are planning to consider whether we can make more use of the risk-assessed recall review. I am happy to discuss this with my noble friend and others to address some of the concerns raised, but the recall powers are there for a reason and we do not propose to get rid of them. We are proposing to make sure that they are used in a way that keeps the public safe, but does not keep people in unnecessarily.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I know that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, wants to get up, but I want to respond quickly to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, about implementation. It is obviously very early days. The Prime Minister has made a commitment to legislate in this Parliament. That is a major step forward and I absolutely undertake to keep the House, and noble Lords who are interested in this, up to date as our thinking develops. But I am sure he understands that I cannot explain precisely how we are going to do it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

We will of course take all the standard precautions, including fire safety, in the provision of these new cells. They are not cheap—that is not a secret —and I think the Lord Chancellor said that the numbers will be in the middle of the range the noble Lord suggests. I agree that we need to make sure that these places are properly staffed. On increases in capacity, as noble Lords know, I am not generally one for blaming the previous Government, but they created 500 new places net in 14 years; we have created 374 in two years.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the noble Lord, who I believe is actually interested in this subject, that this is not a zero-sum game and year zero is not 2024. I pointed out to the then Justice Secretary Jack Straw in July 2007 in the other place that, thanks to the Blair-Brown regime creating 3,000 new criminal offences through 65 new Acts of Parliament that affected the criminal law, the prison population increased. What they forgot about was the need to create prison capacity to put all these new prisoners in. When Lord Hurd of Westwell was Home Secretary in 1990, the prison population was 40,000; it is now just short of 88,000. I am not making a party-political point, I promise, but I do find it a bit boring when Ministers in this Government say it was all the fault of the 2010 to 2024 Government and has nothing whatever to do with what happened before.

Let me give the Minister a gentle suggestion. His noble friend Lord Woodley, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and I earlier this year put forward Amendment 96 to the then Sentencing Bill, which would have allowed a panel of judges to reconsider the imprisonment of those prisoners on IPP sentences. Could he have a look at it and see if he can bring it back? It would take a one-clause Bill, which we could get through this House in 20 minutes—and through the other House in God only knows how long. But we could pass that law to improve the condition of the people my noble friend Lord Clarke has mentioned, and to some small extent reduce the overcrowding of our prisons, which cannot function if they are overcrowded. We just churn people round and round and round. It is an expensive waste of human life.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord. I am interested. I hope I sound interested. I have been interested in all this for a very long time. In fact, I am starting to bore even myself, not just the noble and learned Lord. But I take what he said seriously. As I say, in general I am not one for blaming the previous Government. I absolutely recognise that this has been going on for a long time now and we have not managed to expand the prison estate. There have been successive announcements, but I think we are making some progress in that regard. We are not going to get down to the sorts of numbers that the noble and learned Lord is talking about—he knows that—but we have to make those commitments on prison building.

On IPPs, I will absolutely look at the amendment that the noble and learned Lord proposed. Obviously, at this stage, we are working our way through exactly how we do this, and I am sure I will be back before your Lordships at the Dispatch Box before long to set that out.

There is one other thing, which I should have mentioned when the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, was speaking. My noble friend Lord Blunkett, who cannot be in his place today, said to me that these sentences had not worked in the way they intended, which is a kind of confirmation of what the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, said.

Cohabitation Rights Bill [HL]

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to support the noble Lord, Lord Marks, in introducing his Second Reading of this Cohabitation Rights Bill. In lay man’s language, I suppose one could call it the “unmarried couples divorce Bill”. The Bill reflects modern societal habits and ways of living, and it is time that Parliament legislated for this reality.

The noble Lord brings with him considerable experience. I believe that, when he began his career at the Bar, he was a family law practitioner, so he brings to the Bill his expertise in that field. I am none the less somewhat fearful that the person succeeding me in this debate is the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, a former President of the Family Division, so I shall keep my remarks short but also, I hope, moderately uncontroversial, as I hope the Bill is.

I also hope, following on from what the noble Lord said a moment ago, that the Government, who gave a manifesto commitment along these lines, and the noble Lord can amalgamate their efforts to produce one Bill which all of us can support. If it has the advantage of government backing, the assistance of the Civil Service and so on then we can produce at speed a Bill which is fit for purpose and will achieve the justice and the humanity the noble Lord speaks of.

I am sure that there will be many issues of detail in relation to financial settlement orders and financial relief, the difference between whether periodic payments or simply lump sum payments should be allowed, and so on. However, I hope that these matters can be discussed between the two parties—the Government and the noble Lord—and, if necessary, ironed out in Committee.

Essentially, this is an idea that has been long in development, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, indicated. I seem to remember supporting a Bill similar to this, if not exactly the same, which was introduced into the other place by the late Lord Davies of Stamford, who was then the Member of Parliament for Grantham and Stamford. It had broad support there but never got much further than a Friday morning’s debate.

As I said, the Bill recognises contemporary societal norms and, above all, protects the children of these unions in a way which is fair and right. I recognise the good sense of the example that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, mentioned just a moment ago about one of the couple working and the other not working, and so on, which seems highly important in modern family law.

Unlike so many Private Members’ Bills, this one has a decent ancestry: that is to say, it flows from a Law Commission recommendation. It is detailed and clear. I am sure it is capable of improvement but, none the less, it is clear in its purposes and its effects. I hope that the House will give it its support today and allow it to pursue its further passage with the assistance of the Government.

Imprisonment for Public Protection

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

It is possible that some of these offenders may have been given a discretionary life sentence and therefore would still be subject to the parole process and therefore still in prison if they had not the met the statutory release test. It is also possible that some of these offenders may have been given standard determinate sentences and therefore could have been released by now. However, all IPP offenders are subject to review by the independent Parole Board, which has, in some cases repeatedly, found them unsafe to be released.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there are now about 1,000 IPP prisoners still in custody and, of that 1,000, only about 50 are unsuitable for release at any time, by virtue of either their health or the seriousness of the criminal offence for which they were convicted? Does it not seem right that we should make an aggressive effort to release some of those 950 and require the Parole Board and those in charge of early release to concentrate on them rather than, for example, child rapists or other forms of sexual criminal?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord is incorrect: 896 IPP prisoners have never been released; that is 11% down on last year. My view is that we need to get them into the right prison. Two years ago, only 70% of them were in the right prison; now 91% are in the right prison, and we need to support them so they can get out. Prisons like HMP Grendon, which is a therapeutic community, do good work with IPP prisoners, and HMP Warren Hill has specialist units to support them. I want them to progress as quickly as possible but as safely as possible, so when they are out, they can stay out and do so safely.

Imprisonment for Public Protection

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

Can I make two things clear? First, recall is not used as a punishment for a minor breach of licence. I am afraid that the noble Baroness is wrong about that. It is a means of protecting victims and the public when the Probation Service assesses that it can no longer manage that offender in the community. Recall is an important and swift public protection measure. Also, HMPPS has strengthened the scrutiny and quality assurance of recall decisions. There is a higher threshold for IPP prisoners in relation to recall. There must be not only a breach of their licence conditions such that there is a concern about the risk that they present but a causal link between that breach and the index offence for which they are serving the sentence in the first place.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to the figure that my noble friend Lord Moylan mentioned—namely, the nearly 1,000 prisoners on IPP sentences who are still incarcerated and are well beyond their tariff. The Minister will know that not everything that is in her brief is necessarily worth reading out. The resort to the mantra of public safety is overused. There may perhaps be a handful of those 1,000 prisoners who are not safe to be released because they are genuinely dangerous or because they have become so institutionalised that they are incapable of living within the community. Can she please invite her noble friend Lord Timpson, whom we all admire, to work a lot harder than he does—and he works very hard—to ensure that at least 950 of those 1,000 prisoners are released on parole this year?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I join the noble and learned Lord in his admiration for my noble friend Lord Timpson, but the fact is that we have an independent Parole Board, which makes the decisions—not the Government—on whether someone can safely be managed within the community, as the noble and learned Lord knows. If they cannot be safely managed in the community and are released, they will be living next door to you—and no responsible Government are going to do that.

Prisoner Early Release

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

What I can tell the noble Baroness is that all our sympathies are for the victims of these shocking crimes. It is absolutely terrible what happened. By law, tomorrow this this criminal will have to be released. What is important is that there will be substantial and robust licence conditions under MAPPA, with a recall option as well. He will know that the eyes of the state will be on him 24 hours a day.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, there are 3,650 women in prison in England and Wales. There are 12 women’s prisons and, as it happens, all 12 of them are in England. Of that 3,650, 2,500—that is about 70% of the women’s prison population—are in custody for non-violent offences. Why do the Government not release them, or at least some of them, and redesignate some of the women’s prisons to house the rapists and child molesters that seem to be about to be released?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord’s figures are correct. What I also believe is that most women should not be in prison. I believe most women are victims. When you know that over 60% of women in prison have brain damage as a result of being beaten up, you have to ask yourself the question, “Where is the right place for them?” What we need is a very robust and well-invested Probation Service. We need to make sure they have a house to live in when they are released and that they get the support both in prison and out, so that the likelihood of reoffending can be reduced. With the Women’s Justice Board that we set up last year, we have done a great amount of work on a women’s diversion fund. We already had one women’s intensive supervision court, and we have announced another four, so this is part of the process of getting to a point where we can close a women’s prison.

King’s Speech

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Wolfson has done the House a service, not only through what he said and the way that he said it but by saving me from saying it all over again. I agree with every word that he said.

I could also spend the entirety of the time allotted to me in this debate, and a lot more, speaking about the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—whose valedictory speech we will hear very shortly—thanking him for his contribution to public understanding of our constitution through his books, his broadcasts, his journalism, his lectures and his participation among us here in your Lordships’ House. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, I congratulate him on becoming a Knight of the Garter, a fitting recognition by His Majesty of his achievements and his service to the country over many years. I should perhaps also add my congratulations to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, and the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has written to the effect that:

“Whereas every other Western democracy has codified its system of government, Britain’s constitution is a mish-mash of laws and conventions, customs and courtesies. Britain sees no need for the legalistic … writing down its constitution in one place. Instead it relies on the notion that its politicians know where the unwritten lines of the constitution lie, and do not cross them. ‘The British constitution’”,


he said,

“‘is a state of mind’”.

He famously described this as the “good chaps” theory of government, which requires a sense of restraint all round to make it work. He said:

“We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps’ … who understand the rules and choose to observe them. That has left us vulnerable to those who are not ‘good chaps’ but are willing to smash those rules for their own advantage”.


I will not divert myself down my anecdotage to refer to the Prorogation case, in which I appeared for Sir John Major to intervene on behalf of one former Prime Minister and leader of my party against the then current leader of my party and Prime Minister, but suffice it to say that the case described very neatly what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, was writing about. Many years ago, Professor Dicey wrote that if you break a convention, you will end up breaking the law. In 2019, that prediction was made good.

Whether one uses the expression “good chaps” or something else, there never was a golden age of politics in our history. It is a history of disagreement and occasionally of violent conflict. However, for most of the last few centuries, we have all understood each other. That attachment to commonly accepted rules, to passionate but well-argued debate and behaviour in the governance of our country’s affairs, is now, as this weekend has demonstrated, under strain.

I have spoken of the fellowship that existed between parliamentarians, the legal profession and the judiciary, which has become attenuated. We used to speak the same constitutional language and understood where we could go and where we should not go. The courts did not invade Parliament, and Parliament and the Executive did not abuse the judiciary. Barristers were not attacked for representing unpopular clients or vicious criminals. We were all part of a shared endeavour to do the very best for our country and its people, even if we came from different backgrounds and wanted different outcomes.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, is on the Front Bench. He has worked his guts out trying to improve the prison system, but, sadly, he has been prevented from doing the one thing that he and I want to do, which is to reform the IPP system finally and for good. I am sorry that there was nothing in the gracious Speech that allowed him to bring forward a package of reform.

I will say no more about the jury system. There is plenty of time to say something about that when we come to deal with the now, I understand, newly named courts modernisation Bill—it is the same rubbish but a different name. I think the Government ought to drop it.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 27th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

I will speak briefly to my amendment in this group because it is my duty shortly to chair the Committee. To broaden the debate that the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, introduced, I simply say that there is clearly a need to establish that this post can have confidence and a degree of consensus around it. I am not sure that that has been achieved by what has been proposed so far.

My amendment simply brings in the procedure used in the Commons for most regulatory posts: they are the subject of some sort of hearing process by the relevant Select Committee. That system was developed in the years when I was in the Commons, and as chair of the Justice Committee I operated it several times. It works reasonably well. In rare cases, the Treasury Committee, for example, has a veto on the appointment, as this amendment suggests, but it is a means of trying to ensure that the right questions are asked at the right time when appointments are made. Surely, after recent weeks, we have learned the lesson that, if you do not have proper scrutiny of appointments and a system in which the right questions are asked, things can go very badly wrong. We certainly do not want them to go badly wrong in this area. That is sufficient to explain what my amendment is about.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful that the noble Lord was able to introduce his remarks before he has to go and perform his functions as chairman of the Committee. I have only a few things to say, and my amendment is discrete, in the sense that it does not really affect much of the rest of the Bill. It can be taken quite briefly, and I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will be able to agree to it, not least because it bolsters the job that he once held.

With respect, I disagree with only one point that the noble Baroness, Lady Cass, made. The function of the commissioner is not simply administrative; there is a judicial element to their work, which is found in Clause 4(4)(d). One of the principal functions of the commissioner is

“determining applications for reconsideration of panel decisions under section 18”.

That said, I fully accept that it is a mixed-function job: it is partly administrative and partly judicial—but then so are quite a lot of senior judicial jobs. The Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls all have heavy administrative burdens as well as having to perform a judicial function, and no one would suggest, I venture to say, that those people should be appointed directly by the Prime Minister.

It is more constitutionally appropriate for the voluntary assisted dying commissioner to be appointed, as so many other judicial and quasi-judicial posts are, by the sovereign on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor. I appreciate that the office of the Lord Chancellor has changed a lot since the 2005 Act—more’s the pity, in my view, but there we are. That was a long time ago. When I become Prime Minister, of course, I shall have it changed.

There is a nice distinction to be drawn with the appointments made in the way that I suggest. If my amendment is accepted by the Committee or by the House as a whole, it will obviously have a knock-on effect on the appointment of the deputy commissioner under paragraph 3(1) of Schedule 1—but let us not delay ourselves with that. All I am saying is that it is more appropriate for this particular function to be appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the Lord Chancellor, as so many similar posts are.

A Minister responding for the Government in the other place said that the investigatory powers commissioner is appointed by the Prime Minister, and he, like the assisted dying commissioner, has to be a sitting or retired member of the senior judiciary. But that is a false point. The distinction between this job and the investigatory powers commissioner is that the investigatory powers commissioner deals with matters of national security—which are essentially a matter for the Prime Minister—whereas this assisted dying commissioner will deal not with matters of national security, foreign policy or anything of that nature but simply with the workings of this Bill, or this Act as it may yet become.

This a very short and simple point that I am sure the noble and learned Lord can easily agree with, because it does not damage the Bill. It is simply a technical adjustment of the route to appointment, and I urge the Committee to support it.

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, I will speak to three amendments in this group, two of which stand in my name. The third is Amendment 128 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, which I have co-signed and will touch on briefly now.

Amendment 128 is essentially probing in nature. The Bill lists the principal functions of the commissioner—we do not take particular exception to that—but does not outline their specific duties, so we feel that there is a bit of a gap at present and are probing whether the duties are correct and whether the commissioner has a role in ensuring effective oversight. I look forward to hearing the response of the Bill’s sponsor on that.

I move on to Amendment 129, following on from the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Cass. When I arrived today I did not anticipate that she would be my warm-up act in relation to the amendment—I thank her for her remarks. The amendment essentially deals with whether the commissioner should be required to be either a senior judge or a retired judge. In part it also has a slightly probing quality, and again I will listen to the remarks of the Bill’s sponsor. Given where the passage of the Bill has gone so far and where it might land—the situation is slightly fluid—and although I appreciate that, for instance, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has made suggestions on how we could inject a level of judicial introduction to the panels, we will probably be keen to press this on Report if the issue is not resolved and we are left with the current situation.

The reason for that is that when the Bill was introduced in the Commons, one of its core elements was the judicial function and, indeed, judges on the panels. That was one of the great selling points of the supposed—and slightly self-proclaimed, I have to say—safest Bill in the world. But that position has been resiled from and, although I am sure that the Bill’s sponsor will give reasons for it, we have moved away from that core element. If we do not have that core element of a judge on the panel, do we leave a situation in which the commissioner has to be either a senior serving judge or a retired judge? Would that create a veneer of judicial impact when the core element has been taken out?

That is all the more appropriate when we look at the functions that have been listed for the commissioner, of which there are five under Clause 4(4). Paragraphs (a) and (b) relate to “receiving documents” and compiling a list of eligible panel members. It is hard to see why those functions, which are essentially administrative in nature, would require a level of judicial input. Similarly, paragraph (c) relates to

“making arrangements in relation to such panels”.

Again, that function lies largely within administrative competence rather than requiring any element of judicial quality.

The one area that does touch on that, as has been highlighted, is paragraph (d), which talks about the reconsideration of cases, but cases are not to be reconsidered on their own merits. The Bill’s sponsor in the other place, Kim Leadbeater, said that the commissioner is

“not acting as a judge”,

so there is a query about the level of judicial impact even of paragraph (d). Finally, under paragraph (e) there will be a monitoring role, particularly as regards medical statistics. There is a question mark in relation to that. If we are looking for somebody to undertake that role, which I think was initially put within the remit of the Chief Medical Officer, it seems to me that a medical professional is much better suited to it. There are queries about the applicability and whether we are simply creating a façade of judicial involvement by having the requirements currently in the Bill.

My Amendment 496C would afford a person, if they desire it, the opportunity of a hearing before the commissioner, rather than their case being decided by a paper hearing. That would cover aspects such as someone being registered disabled under the Act, the availability of communication, cognitive impairment and mental distress, in the interests of justice.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Lords Chamber

I hope the Minister will be able to look favourably on Amendments 69 and 75, and I would very much welcome a meeting between Committee and Report.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I rise with a degree of caution. I entirely understand the motives behind the amendments moved by my noble friend Lord Sandhurst, and that moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. Shall we begin by trying to remember what an unduly lenient sentence is? It is one that falls outside the range of sentences that a judge, taking into consideration all the relevant factors and having regard to the sentencing guidance, could reasonably consider appropriate. In other words, the sentence must be not just lenient, but unduly lenient. One of the things the Court of Appeal must consider when it is looking at an application to review a sentence is that the offender has been put through the sentencing process, or will be put through the sentencing process, for a second time, and that it will not intervene unless the sentence is significantly below the one the judge should have passed.

Law officers often receive applications—I say this with some experience, as I was a law officer from 2010 to 2012, and in England and Wales it is the law officers who have the ability to make these applications to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division—on the basis that the person complaining about the sentence just thinks it is not adequately severe, but that is not the test. One therefore needs to not encourage an expectation—this is what may follow from the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton—that, by getting a government department or the Crown Prosecution Service to write to a disappointed victim or family member, it must follow that the CPS, or whichever government department is required to do this, agrees, or that it will lead to a successful appeal before the Court of Appeal.

I remember that all sorts of people used to read newspaper articles about a particular sentence that often bore very little resemblance to the sentencing remarks or the details of the case. Sometimes, in some newspapers, you would get an editorial saying that it was a disgrace that this lenient judge has done this, that or the other, and that something must be done, and all sorts of people would then write to the law officer’s department demanding that something be done. Very often the sentence was passed in relation to an offence that did not come under the scheme, or, if it did, on proper examination it did not fall within the ambit of what the Court of Appeal was likely to disturb. So I suspect that all sorts of expectations could be built into the public mind, which could lead only to disappointment.

Secondly, there is something to be said about finality. Although one does not always have any sympathy for a criminal defendant, they are entitled to justice and finality. Having sentenced people, I assure noble Lords that sentencing can be difficult, certainly for a judge who is dealing with, shall we say—I do not mean this in a silly way—the less serious types of criminal offence that none the less come within this scheme. I always found sentencing to be the most difficult part of the judicial function. This is a generalisation, but if you are a High Court judge dealing with criminal cases, the chances are that you will probably have to decide the tariff only on life sentences. But if you are sitting in the Crown Court as a recorder or circuit judge, you may very well have to deal with all sorts of quite complicated considerations when working out the just sentence for a particular defendant based on the facts of a particular offence. It is not always easy.

In my experience of having to seek the advice of the Treasury counsel and making up my own mind about whether an application should go to the Court of Appeal, I found that, by and large, the overwhelming majority of judges passed a just and correct sentence—when I say “correct”, it is not a binary exercise—that was entirely defensible and not the sort of thing that the Court of Appeal would have disturbed. To encourage people to make applications would be a mistake when it is going to lead only to disappointment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The amendment would not encourage the CPS, or whatever the notifying body is, to encourage the victim to appeal; it would merely be notifying them of the right. Does the noble and learned Lord accept that?

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I can see what the printed words say, but if the Crown Prosecution Service was to write to the victim saying, “Do you realise that you can apply to the law officers to have this sentence reviewed by the Court of Appeal?”, it would give an imprimatur and an indication. That is the implication, and we should resist it.

I do not want to go on too long. Anybody can write to the law officers to say, “Will you review this sentence?” It does have to be a victim, or the family or next of kin of a deceased victim. There are plenty of avenues available to the public and to victims if they wish to explore this. To come back to my first point, we need to exercise a degree of caution before opening the floodgates to lots of disappointment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to which I have added my name. I have listened carefully to what the noble and learned Lord has said, but this is not an attempt to encourage lots of challenges to unduly lenient sentences. It is, above all, an attempt to achieve a degree of parity between the way offenders and defendants are treated.

The intent of the amendment it to suggest that a government department nominated by the Secretary of State should do the informing. It would need to be a body that was viewed as genuinely neutral, but it would be perfectly possible to inform the victim of their right and make quite clear the orbit within which an appeal against an unduly lenient sentence is likely to be successful and the parameters beyond which it would be highly unlikely to be considered, so as to make very clear to the victim, from the very beginning, the possibility of their having a case that might be over the threshold as opposed to being clearly below the threshold. It is entirely possible to imagine that one could create that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 68 is in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and my friend the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and I thank them for their ongoing support.

This amendment revisits an issue I previously raised during the passage of the Sentencing Bill. I return to it because I feel so strongly that this anomaly in our criminal justice system is one that must be resolved and merits further and careful consideration by this Committee. It concerns children who commit offences while under the age of 18 but who, through delay in proceedings entirely outside their control, are first brought before the court only after their 18th birthday. Under the current system, they will be sentenced as adults, losing access to youth-specific disposals, including referral orders, youth rehabilitation orders and the support of youth justice services, even though their offending behaviour occurred during childhood.

As I previously said, this can only be described as a postcode lottery in sentencing outcomes. If two young people commit the exact same offence at the exact same age in similar circumstances, and one happens to live in an area where their case reaches court before their 18th birthday and the other does not, the first will get all the support from the youth court process, while the second defendant, not because of the seriousness of the offence or their maturity, will end up in the adult court. The consequences of not being part of the youth justice process and the subsequent treatment of criminal record disclosures can affect a young person well into adulthood, including their future employment prospects. The Bill provides an opportunity to look at this issue, correct an unfair anomaly and ensure consistency in sentencing.

As I have said previously, the youth justice system exists for a reason. Those of us who have worked in youth justice know how the youth court has specifically trained magistrates who emphasise welfare, education and rehabilitation and can turn young lives around and reduce reoffending. Without this support, their future could be bleak. In the passage of the Sentencing Bill, my friend the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier spoke in support of addressing this anomaly, and I am grateful once again for their support today. I was encouraged by the support of the Minister. While he stated that youth sentencing lay largely outside the scope of the Sentencing Bill, he made it clear that the Government had a great deal of sympathy with the issue. He also indicated that there may be merit in looking at this issue further, while understandably pointing to the need to consider the wider implications across the justice system. I took that as a constructive response. It is in the same spirit that I bring the matter back today.

This amendment simply seeks to ensure that, where offending behaviour took place during childhood, it is assessed and addressed through the correct lens—one that reflects age, maturity and culpability at the time of the offence, rather than being determined by administrative delay entirely outside an offender’s control. I return to this issue today because I feel so strongly that we must address this clear anomaly. I hope that the Government will be willing to take a second look at this and consider how it might be resolved. I beg to move.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to support my noble friend Lady Sater’s amendment. I have heard her express these views before, I heard her express them just now, and there is nothing more to be said. I urge this Committee to get on and agree with her.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sater, my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, for tabling Amendment 68. We agree with the principle that children who commit crimes should thus be charged as children, even if by the time of their court appearance they are above the age of 18. What matters is the mental state of the offender at the time the offence was committed, not the lottery of when he or she comes to court. The amendment seeks to ensure that there is no loophole preventing this being the case, and we therefore hope that the Government will agree with that aim.

Amendment 70 in my name concerns the collection and publication of data relating to offenders’ immigration history and status. This is a sensitive issue. Illegal immigration has long been a core political issue for voters and has become even more salient in recent years. There continues to be widespread misinformation and unfounded assertions, both in person and online. That is because empirical evidence concerning immigration has not always been readily available. People perceive changes occurring as a result of policy, but often operate under the assumption that the Government are shielding themselves from transparency. That is not the case, of course, but it must be dealt with.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than with crime rates. The public feel less safe, they see the demographic change and they link the two. This is problematic. It can lead to misguided opinions about certain parts of society. There is no available data to inform opinions of what the true position is. Non-governmental studies and disjointed data releases have repeatedly justified this connection, but the lack of clarification from the Government still leaves room for the general public to be decried as fearmongering or bigoted. It is not just policy: people deserve to know the impact that government policies are having on their everyday lives, especially when they can have immediate impacts on their safety.

We say that there is a clear case to publish crime data by immigration status. Accurate and comprehensive data allows for informed debate and evidence-based policy. At present the information is scarce, it is fragmented and it leaves the public, and indeed policymakers, reliant on conjecture. If transparency and open justice are priorities, to release offender data by foreign national status and immigration history would provide clarity, support public confidence and allow all sides to address the facts without speculation.

The Minister will be aware of the time we have previously spent on the topics in Amendments 71 and 74. Amendment 71 would exempt sex offenders and domestic abusers from being eligible for early release at the one-third point of their sentence, while Amendment 74 would reaffirm the Government’s policy of favouring suspended sentences but once again seeks to exclude sexual offences and domestic abuse from the presumption. Custodial sentences should of course by judged by the extent to which they deter reoffending. We accept the Government’s belief that short custodial sentences often do not serve this end, but reoffending cannot be the sole metric by which the nature of a punishment is decided. The prison system at least prevents individuals from offending while they are incarcerated.

For sexual offences and domestic abuse, these considerations are not abstract, certainly for the victims. Victims’ lives, safety, sense of security, the opportunity to reorganise their lives and perhaps move or otherwise change their way of living, are directly affected by whether an offender is at liberty or in custody. In 2019, the first year for which comparable data is available, there were 214,000 arrests for domestic abuse and 60,000 convictions, a conviction proportion of 28%. In 2025—six years later and under this Government—there were 360,000 arrests for domestic abuse but only 41,000 convictions, a drop from 60,000 and a conviction rate of just 11%. Something must be done.

The Government have highlighted the scale and seriousness of sexual offences and domestic abuse. They have described violence against women and girls as a “national emergency”. They have committed to strategies including specialist investigative teams and enhanced training for officers, and demonstrated recognition that these crimes demand careful handling. It would be inconsistent to promote such measures while making it easier for offenders of these crimes to avoid immediate custody.

This principle also extends to early release. It becomes a moral question rather than a purely empirical one when an offender has drastically altered the life of a victim by means of their crime. I do not think it reflects who we are as a society if we say that those who commit as invasive and exploitative a crime as sexual assault or domestic abuse should not serve the full extent of their sentences.

I end by saying I hope the Liberal Democrats will support these amendments. They have made it a point of principle, as have we, that victims of domestic violence deserve targeted measures to prevent them suffering further harm. Their justice spokesman in the other place, Josh Barbarinde, tabled a Bill last year to prevent domestic abusers from being released early under the Government’s SDS40 scheme. They now have a chance to put their principle into practice, as Amendment 71 would have exactly the same effect. I hope they will be able to offer their support.