King’s Speech

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as in the register: I am supported by the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project. I wish to talk about the annual event for this Parliament that is an immigration and asylum Bill. Our position on these Benches is clear: we believe that the British people demand a migration system rooted in order and compassion, one that provides a disciplined framework for entry while protecting those fleeing for their lives.

The Government, to their credit, have reduced regular migration to near net zero, but we must be honest about our national needs. With an ageing population and a falling birth rate, migration is not a choice but a necessity for GDP growth. Analysis from the OECD is clear. Well-managed migration and successful integration are critical to prevent our economy falling backwards. We agree that those who enter irregularly and do not require protection must be humanely returned. However, an orderly system requires a functional queue, and currently, beyond the micro French deal, no such queue exists. Without a legal path for entry, we cannot effectively address those who jump the queue.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Teverson, who has described the proposed Bill as being flawed. It is flawed because, first, it targets the wrong people, and, secondly, it is applied retrospectively to people who are already living and working legally in the United Kingdom, in the hope that making their lives difficult will dissuade irregular arrivals. There is no evidence that penalising immigrants living here legally through increased costs, complexities and barriers to family reunion will change the minds of those seeking to come here irregularly. There is no evidence that people seeking to come here irregularly will be dissuaded from coming if they see that those immigrants who have been given protection and are living here legally are being given a tough time. By proposing a road to settlement that favours the wealthy over other hard-working contributors, the Government are creating a system that suggests that millions of legal residents are unwelcome. This is the snakes and ladders policy described by the most reverend Primate earlier today.

There is a word cloud in a recent analysis of the problem where people who are going to be affected by this new law were asked to name the migration system in this country by giving one word to describe the UK immigration system. They were: “confusing”, “hostile”, “frustrating”, “unfair” and an expletive beginning with the letter “s”. As one EU resident said, “They don’t want to make us feel welcome and let us belong”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, commented, belonging that is just conditional is dangerous for our society. Costs, errors, complexities, family reunion, the effect on employment and education, and hampering children’s development are all problems that the Bill will make worse. Making millions of legal residents feel depressed and unwelcome does nothing to create an orderly or compassionate system, let alone help the pathway to integration. We must move beyond legislation that prioritises fear over humanity and economic common sense.

Protection of Prison Staff

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, on 3 April, the Times reported that Islamist gangs had created gross dysfunction in HMP Frankland, in which a large number of convicted terrorists are held. Just nine days later, on 12 April, Abedi, the Manchester bomber, detained in the same Frankland prison, threw hot oil over a prison officer. Then, on 8 May, Rudakubana, the Southport killer, detained in HMP Belmarsh, threw boiling water over an officer there. Both those terrible attacks were by radical Islamists, in category A prisons. What steps will be taken to isolate such prisoners from access to such dangerous substances? Will tasers be issued in category A prisons, and when will stab vests be provided?

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, with a prison population at 98.9% of capacity last month, a 19% increase in the number of assaults on prison officers in the last year and a shortage of prison officers, that is a bagful of problems for the Minister. Does he have an emergency plan for these problems, and what will he do to ensure that our prison officers are safe and that there is a sufficient number of them?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

Like all noble Lords, I was shocked to hear about the serious assaults against prison officers at HMP Belmarsh and HMP Frankland. It is a sorry state of affairs. We will not tolerate any violence against prison officers. Prisoners who are violent towards of staff will face the full consequences of their actions. The incident at HMP Belmarsh is subject to a police investigation; as such, we are unable to comment further at any level of detail at this stage. However, in the past few weeks, since the recent serious attack at Frankland, we have announced a number of steps to improve prison officer safety, including trialling tasers, suspending the use of self-cook areas for certain prisoners and reviewing whether protective body armour should be made available to front-line staff.

We also have a zero-tolerance approach towards extremist gang activity in prisons. Staff clamp down swiftly on any threatening behaviour. Our staff turn up to work to help people turn their lives around, not to get assaulted.

Prison Maintenance: Insourcing

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. The prison estate suffered historic underinvestment by the previous Government over the last five years, which has led to a growing backlog of maintenance tasks and shocks to the estate from dilapidations. This has made the prison capacity crisis even more acute. As future prison maintenance contracts approach expiry, we will conduct detailed assessments to inform decisions about whether to continue to outsource services, alongside our usual performance management process. Stopping the contract process we inherited last year would have meant incurring additional costs and delivering less value for money. I am glad that the noble Lord mentioned Q-Branch, which is an innovative model that has empowered prisoners to build new skills and play a part in keeping their prisons running smoothly by undertaking tasks such as basic cell restoration, painting and decorating. It is currently active in 25 establishments and I am exploring how we can expand it further, alongside a similar operation called CRED, which helps build skills within prisons that can be used on release to get a job and not reoffend.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, among the myriad problems that the Minister faces is the fact that probably half of the security cameras around the perimeters of our prison estate are not working. Is that because they are too old or did the original contracts not include appropriate maintenance so that these cameras can be made to work for our security and that of prisoners?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is correct that the security of our prisons is of utmost importance and that we need all our security apparatus working correctly. We have had years of underinvestment in our prison estate. I am pleased that the Government are spending £520 million from this year until the end of 2026 on lots of projects, including improving our security.

Prisons: Imprisonment for Public Protection

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Burt for this short debate and all who have spoken in it so far. We should remind ourselves, as she did, that the work we are doing here is subsequent to the abolition of IPP in 2012. We are dealing with the cases of people who were sentenced between 2005 and 2012. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, has just outlined, tremendous hurt has been done to those people. There are now some 240 IPP prisoners in mental health institutions, and the hopelessness of this regime has led to 86 prisoners taking their own lives. We, the state, are responsible for this inhumane treatment. In many cases, it is psychological torture. Basically, this is an unjust system; that is now agreed across all parts of this House, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, but the solutions to the problem are proving more difficult to grasp.

Action plans in the past were criticised because they did not have clear strategic priority, ownership, detail, timeframes and performance measures. The scheme as we see it now, refreshed, has led to reductions in the numbers serving sentences but the new plan will not mean an end to these sentences altogether, and the timeframe for the reduction in numbers is still slow. That is, in great part, as a result of resource implications and issues.

As my noble friend Lady Burt has said, there is limited scope for proper preparation for reintegration into society more generally. A member of the Parole Board who has served on it for 12 years said that he had

“seen the difficulties that hopelessness and the lack of opportunity to reform brings to people—some people have got worse in prison because of that”.

Lack of hope due to a limited light at the end of the tunnel is causing these problems.

It is very difficult for IPP offenders to engage in rehabilitation opportunities. This is made worse by the capacity issues in prisons, as my noble friend Lady Burt pointed out. On recall, both my noble friend and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, pointed to the dramatic increase in the recall procedure to show that it is not getting better quickly.

Members have raised numerous questions on the current action plan, as has the Prison Reform Trust. I can sum up those questions in two that encompass what the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan said. What do the Government believe will be the measure of success with the current action plan? What will the numbers and expectations of successful outcomes look like? We need an answer to those questions. We need to find the resource for progression panels inside the institutions, so that we can work properly to give people a route out.

I know that I have only a few minutes to touch on resentencing. In that time, I will refer to the letter the Government received from the Justice Committee which points out that they never committed to introducing measures that would lead to people being released who were dangerous to the community. It lists in some detail what the proposals were. Will the Government commit in this Parliament to looking afresh at this matter, in light of the view of the Justice Committee and that letter? Will they, as a minimum, seek advice from an expert group as recommended in the committee’s letter?

We in this Parliament are useful in developing legislation. The Government may be concerned about bringing forward further legislation but, if there is a genuine concern, I assure the Minister that we on these Benches will support him to deal with this matter. Any resulting legislation would bring this miserable problem to a satisfactory end.

Prisoners: Early Release Scheme

Lord German Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is correct that probation is under a lot of pressure and our probation colleagues do an amazing job in these difficult situations. I have been fortunate to spend a lot of time since I have taken on this role visiting probation staff around the country, and although we are recruiting an extra 1,000 probation staff by March next year—that is on track and going well—it takes time to train people and for them to gain experience, because much of their role is about relationship building and understanding the challenges that offenders face.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, one way in which the prison population could be reduced would be to deal with prisoners on remand, who are one in five of all prisoners at the moment. They do not have any access to meaningful activity, and we need to move the process along by which they have their cases heard. Can the Minister tell the House what steps have been taken to reduce the remand population and when we are likely to see that reduction taking effect?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am afraid I would not want to put a date on when things are going to change, but I assure the noble Lord that the remand population of 17,000 is far too high. He is right that a number of prisoners who are on remand do not engage as well as they should in all the opportunities they have to turn their lives around—for example, education and purposeful activity. Changing magistrates’ sentencing powers to 12 months will free up Crown Court time to reduce the backlog, and this will reduce time spent on remand.

Prison Capacities

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, the one thing that we can take away from this timely debate, which was well introduced by my noble friend Lady Burt, is that it has demonstrated that the Minister has an inbox full of difficult decisions. The current action to release prisoners early cannot remove all the risks inherent in this exceptional situation, but it does expose the problems, weaknesses and failures of the current justice system. The immediate need to free up prison spaces cannot be allowed to mask these failures. A top-to-toe set of reforms is needed from pre-sentencing through to licensing ending.

This debate has shown that the problems are extensive: there is a lack of meaningful activity in prisons; sentence inflation; vulnerability of prisoners to self-harm; drug abuse; poor morale in the Prison and Probation Service workforce; shortage of staff at all levels; and a lack of resource to effectively provide essential housing, skills and healthcare when leaving prison. The list goes on—in the course of this debate I have written down another seven or eight that should appear on the Minister’s action list. I want to add another: the so-called dynamic pricing of facilities offered to those seeking to train offenders within prison, which is pricing NGOs offering training out of prisons, such as Redemption Roasters at The Mount prison.

But there is great work going on, as we have heard. That needs replication and augmentation. Will the Minister, with all his experience at his elbow, agree that wholesale reform is needed, and as swiftly as possible? When will he be able to set out the actions that we need to take to resolve all these difficult issues, and will he provide a wholesale reform?

This is a massive project, which needs fixing so that the punishment needle can be moved back towards rehabilitation and reducing offending. That will produce a much more productive activity list for prisoners when they leave prison as well, but it will also save huge costs to taxpayers and make an improvement to society at large. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.