Sentencing Bill

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I start by expressing my sadness—along with that of so many others in the House—at the death of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, whose heartfelt commitment to and hard work for victims have been quite outstanding. I also thank the Minister for his opening, and his work on this Bill. It is a tribute to him that—with the enlightened and evidence-based backing of David Gauke and his team—he has had the courage to champion and introduce these reforms to sentencing, aimed at reducing reoffending.

The urgency of this Bill had indeed flowed from the prison-capacity crisis, which this Government inherited from the Conservative Government—whose responsibility, I am bound to say, was surprisingly not acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, in his criticisms of the Bill and his call for severity. The reality is that we imprison far too many people in this country, for far too long: many more than many other western European nations. There is no evidence of a reduction in reoffending rates as a result. As analysed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, we have persisted in increasing sentence lengths by legislating both for longer overall sentences and for longer periods served, but also by a general sentence inflation, possibly in response to political, public and media pressure.

The noble Lords, Lord Bach and Lord Carter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, captured this well in their critique of the regrettable toughness contest between political parties. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, put it into historical context with his story of severe judges of the past now being seen as “softies”. The number of remand prisoners has increased, as the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, pointed out, and we have recently seen a record number of prisoners recalled for breach-of-release conditions: some 15% higher in the second quarter of this year than in the same quarter last year. The reality is that prison often does far more harm than good, and that is particularly true of short sentences. Where we can, we should be relying instead on effective and well-resourced community sentences, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester argued in her principled speech, supported in large part by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings.

Many of our prisons have been bad at rehabilitation: underresourced, overcrowded and understaffed, with the toxic cocktail of failings rehearsed today and regularly in previous debates in this House, including too many prisoners in cells filled beyond capacity; prisoners locked in their cells, often for 22 to 23 hours per day, with very little purposeful activity. There is a shortage of vocational and educational training, and too few staff to manage the courses there are. An epidemic of drug abuse is fuelled by widespread drug trading often, sadly, involving corrupt staff. Prisoners, adults and young people, with serious mental health and addiction issues—as well as the literacy, educational and social difficulties discussed by the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield—find that those issues are all going unaddressed.

There is also appalling violence within our prisons. In June, the MoJ and Prison Service reported increases of 11% in assaults by prisoners on other prisoners and of 13% in assaults on staff over the last year alone, attributed in their report directly to overcrowding. There are persistently squalid conditions in many prisons with inadequate, cancelled or deferred maintenance programmes.

As my noble friend Lord Beith said, the criticisms we make do not apply to all prisons. Many of our prisons are of high quality, innovative and motivational, but a successful Prison Service would ensure that all institutions met those standards. In spite of all this, I accept the Minister’s overall characterisation of the commitment and performance of prison staff as incredible. But against a history and background of low morale, there are still too many who fall badly short of that characterisation, and their wrongdoing needs to be exposed and tackled.

The Bill recognises that reducing reoffending depends crucially on rehabilitation and on the Probation Service. It is worth remembering the massive cost of reoffending, estimated to account for more than half of the overall costs of crime in the UK—an annual cost of between £18 billion and more than £23 billion, even without the costs to the state of housing and social care for the families of offenders.

Central to the success of the Bill and the Government in their aims will be resourcing the Probation Service. The Government plan, as we have heard, to recruit 13,000 more probation officers by March next year and are allocating an additional £700 million to the Probation Service by 2028. However, we are seriously concerned that these figures do not add up, as my noble friend Lord Foster explained in detail—the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and others expressed the same doubts. Do the figures take into account three areas of extra costs arising from this Bill: more tagging; implementation of the presumption against immediate short sentences: and extra supervision of early releases on the earned progression model?

We welcome the presumption against short sentences. We have been calling for this for many years in the light of consistent evidence that such sentences increase rather than reduce reoffending. It is to be hoped that supervision of suspended sentences, together with conditions such as treatment conditions imposed by the courts, will lead to a targeted approach to rehabilitation and to addressing the individual difficulties of offenders in achieving rehabilitation within their communities, as described by the noble Baroness, Lady Porter. Suspension of sentences for three years rather than two should assist in this process. However, more suspended sentences should not, as the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, argued, reduce the making of community orders where prison sentences are not warranted.

We also welcome the introduction of the earned progression model recommended by the Gauke review for standard determinate sentences. We recognise the perhaps surprisingly beneficial influence of the Texas model. This represents a logical, sensible and, above all, transparent approach to early release to replace the emergency and indiscriminate SDS40 arrangement. But, for the new system to work well and fairly, training and education in prison must be made more universally available. We would argue that there should be better rehabilitative programmes for prisoners on remand, as well as for sentenced prisoners, and we will introduce an amendment to that effect.

The introduction of a recorded finding of domestic abuse in the sentencing of a relevant offender is a reform for which my honourable friend Josh Babarinde campaigned in the House of Commons. This should enable victims and subsequent partners of domestic abusers to be better protected from past perpetrators. We also applaud the overdue recognition of the interests of victims as a factor in the purposes of sentencing.

On the question of the Sentencing Council, we fully agree with points widely made by my noble friend Lord Beith, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, and others. We regard the Sentencing Council as performing a valuable and independent function in providing advice to sentencers. Nor do we see the Sentencing Council’s work as undermining the constitutional role of Parliament in sentencing policy, as the Bill and this debate so clearly demonstrate. We will seek to amend the proposal in Clause 19 to subject sentencing guidelines to a veto by the Lord Chief Justice—or Lady Chief Justice—and the Lord Chancellor, which is an unwarranted restriction on the independence of the Sentencing Council.

We have specific concerns about the recall provisions in Clause 29. Effectively, the Bill would introduce an automatic recall of 56 days for most prisoners recalled to prison. For less serious breaches, 56 days is a long time. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, pointed out, such recalls may cost offenders their accommodation or places on treatment programmes or the like. We will seek to amend this.

My noble friend Lord Beith mentioned our regret that the Bill does not commit to a resentencing of IPP prisoners. I agree with the tenor of speeches on IPPs from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, the noble Lords, Lord Moylan, Lord Woodley and Lord Berkeley of Knighton, the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean, and others. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, made the point of principle, and he added an important point on the cost of IPPs.

We also reject the notion of publicly shaming offenders undertaking unpaid work with names and photographs. It is vindictive and unhelpful—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings.

Overall, the Bill is overdue in putting rehabilitation and reform first, respecting the evidence on what works in reducing crime. Along with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and others, we reject the Conservative Front Bench’s characterisation of these reforms as likely to increase crime and make the streets less safe. We stress, however, along with all those who have insisted in this debate, that the Bill’s success depends on providing the Probation Service with the support, personnel and resources that it needs. Ultimately, the potential savings to the public purse in reducing the cost of reoffending and the burgeoning costs of the Prison Service could, if realised, bring great net benefit to society, financial as well as social.