Sentencing Bill

Debate between Lord Sentamu and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, in this country we really have our hearts broken when, in places in the world where there are dictatorships, people are incarcerated year in, year out with their cases not even heard. We find that quite appalling.

When I was sent to administer justice in the northern part of Uganda, where a lot of people had been locked up because President Amin did not want them around, I arrived there and they said, “No, you can’t hear those cases because the president has told us we shouldn’t do this”. I had been trained in the English way of looking at justice. I could not but hear those cases. My first job was to hear those very hard cases, and I found out that there was no evidence as to why they should be in prison.

I remember that I took nine of them into my chambers and told them, “I’m going to keep you locked up, but I’ll tell you on which day you’re going, and I’ll announce in court, when you have already left the country, that you have been discharged from this particular thing on these grounds”. That went on for four months. Then I had my time, when there were no soldiers in the court observing what I was doing. I knew that if I had released them before then, they would have been killed. Part of my falling out with Amin was to do with some of those cases.

It is not easy to deliver justice. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was clear that some of these prisoners—I have met quite a few in Birmingham and in the province of York when I have visited prisons—and their stories leave you saying, “Is this the mother of democracy? Is this the mother of the way courts work? Is this how we treat people?” Those who committed crimes when they were young, particularly, have looked at possibilities, and then what has happened? Hope has been dashed.

I plead with the Minister that, instead of asking noble Lords to withdraw their amendments—that may be the language used, in order that this does not necessarily become a strategy—there be a dialogue with people with good ideas, which the Minister is very good at, so that we solve this once and for all.

This has left me sometimes very angry, so I can understand why the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said that if we do not do anything about it, we already have blood on our hands. A just society is shown by how it deals with the vulnerable, the weak, the helpless. They have been put there for years at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and now at the King’s pleasure. Something has to be done. My view is that the Minister should gather together a group of people with good ideas and have a real conversation, rather than going through the motions of “I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment”, because that is postponing justice, and that is not on.

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

My Lords, the speeches in this debate have been comprehensive and committed, so I have little to add to them. All noble Lords who have spoken have done so passionately and persuasively about ending this scandal. I use the word “scandal”—it has been rightly called a disgrace, a stain on our system, and many other things. The passion for justice of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, shone through every sentence of his speech and has to oblige the Government to end this appalling injustice. We have been guilty, in a country dedicated, nominally at least, to ideals of justice, of the grossest of injustices in this case. It must end, and it must end now.

We have a chance to end it now, completely and for ever. We thought we had abolished IPPs in the LASPO Act when we stopped any new IPP sentences being passed. My noble friend Lord McNally, then Minister of State, and the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, Secretary of State at the time, believed that the power to reverse the burden of proof in that Act would be exercised, so that we would never have this long tail of IPP prisoners who have now served way beyond their tariffs.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, explained how unjust it was that IPP prisoners were treated unlike any other offenders. For those prisoners, we have abandoned any principle that the punishment should fit the crime, in favour of a system of preventive detention with a heavy burden placed throughout on prisoners to prove their fitness for release after their proper punishment—often very short punishment—has been completed. The principle of punishment fitting the crime has been ignored, as has been illuminated by nearly all the speeches today. That illumination has extended to the complete ineffectiveness of the action plan in the case of many IPP prisoners, however well-intentioned it was at the time. Those prisoners could end up, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, pointed out, imprisoned for the rest of their lives if they fail to qualify for release under the action plan.

The sensible way to end this now is to accept one or more of the amendments before the Committee in order to ensure the early release of all remaining IPP prisoners and to end their risk of recall within a reasonable time span. I do not mind which amendment is adopted. I note that after his detailed and learned analysis, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, was broadly content to endorse any of the solutions proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Woodley and Lord Moylan, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Fox, or the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and myself. I too am content with any of those solutions. The important thing is to persuade the Government now to accept one of them and finally to put an end to this injustice.

Sentencing Bill

Debate between Lord Sentamu and Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames

Committee stage
Monday 1st December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, at the beginning of this second day in Committee, in which we have covered Amendments 51 and 52 and now this one, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said that we can talk about doing all of this but it will all depend on whether there are resources to deliver real change.

In Yorkshire, I went to visit a pig farmer. He was very successful and the chair of governors of the local comprehensive school, where Ofsted was making a lot of demands, particularly about the testing of children. Everybody was into testing and examination, but the resources to deliver what was required were lacking. He said to me, “Come, and I will show you my pigs”. So we went to the farm and saw the pigs. He said, “Do you see them? Those are going to be sold in about six weeks’ time. What matters is not that every day I weigh the pigs to see whether they have arrived at the right weight. To fatten the pigs is not constantly to weigh them but to feed them”. That is what actually fattened the pigs, not the constant weighing. Transparency is important, but let us be very careful that we do not overburden the Probation Service by throwing at it a lot of things it needs to do and that we need to know whether it is doing them. What that did to the teachers, at the beginning of Ofsted, was to make them scapegoats to be blamed for a lack of proper resources and lack of constant training of teachers to be better teachers.

I hope that the Secretary of State will not be given so many burdens in things he has to produce before Parliament every year that our eye is taken off how we turn our Prison Service into a place where people really are rehabilitated, where those who want to learn are taught, and where reoffending begins to drop. We have to pay attention to that. I know that accountability and transparency are interesting, but we can become so obsessed that, in the end, people are given more and more burdens and take their eye off the job they are supposed to be doing. I urge a bit of caution, particularly about the Parole Board and what we mean by accountability and how we are going to get there.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that certain things need not all hang out. There are certain things which require confidentiality, and, if we are not careful, we will begin to distrust the entire criminal justice system, because the public will feel unsafe and feel that more should be put in. We are all very keen on it, but how much volunteering time have we ourselves given to helping prisoners and the Prison Service, so that they begin to deliver better?

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

My Lords, I will address briefly Amendment 58A in the name of my noble friend Lady Hamwee and my name. The amendment addresses the need for a report on the availability of activities and treatments for probation requirements. It goes hand in hand with Amendment 139B, in my name, which proposes reporting the levels of reoffending by offenders who have completed both custodial and community sentences.