Sentencing Bill

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, before I make my remarks, I declare two interests. I am a member of the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Lords, which is so admirably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Foster. I am also an officeholder of the All-Party Group on Penal Affairs.

The Bill sets out important reforms to reduce the unnecessary use of custodial sentences, tackle over- crowding, reduce offending and protect victims. I welcome all that, but I want to highlight some of my concerns, which I hope we can deal with in Committee.

The Bill quite rightly bolsters suspended sentences. However, we must guard against more use of suspended sentences instead of community orders, because evidence shows that suspended sentences are imposed on those who should have received community orders. Community orders are not a soft option. With the right investment, intensive community sentences can succeed where short sentences fail. We know that community orders are flexible and allow individuals to tackle the root causes of offending by engaging with mental health, alcohol and drug treatment while retaining their work, home and community ties.

We know that the use of community sentences has more than halved in recent years. We need to encourage greater use of community orders, not less. We also know that female offenders in particular benefit from community orders. The committee on which I sit published a report, Cutting Crime: Better Community Sentences, which highlighted a number of best practices in this area—which, given the time, I will not repeat. If we do not use these sentences, it will defeat the Bill’s objective by simply delaying custodial sentences.

While greater use of community orders is desirable, we also know that, as others have said, their full potential will not be maximised until the Probation Service is fully functional. The Government’s commitment to invest £700 million is welcome, but there will be a shortfall of staff and a time lag in getting staff levels and training up to speed to meet the Bill’s expectations. Furthermore, the Probation Service needs community-based voluntary organisations to be effective. When services are provided locally, various agencies can co-operate effectively. In our report, we argue:

“The colocation and co-commissioning of services are the gold standard”.


Investment in the Probation Service and community-based organisations is crucial if we are to maintain public trust in community sentences.

The earned progression model in the Bill differs from that recommended by the independent sentencing review. The Bill does not include incentives to engage in purposeful activity within the prison before release. There are, however, challenges to the implementation of an earned progression framework, particularly while someone is in prison. Issues of concern—some of them have been highlighted—are, of course, the current overcrowding, a lack of purposeful activity, unequal progression within the prison estate, an unfair adjudication system and the problem of added days. These need to be tackled; without doing so, the progression model will be ineffective in easing the prison capacity crisis and reducing offending.

The second part of the progression model will see those released entering intensive supervision and increased use of electronic monitoring or tagging. The Government have confirmed that tagging will be automatically applied to offenders at the point of release into the second part of the progression model. It is estimated that this would double the number of those tagged. Tagging can be an effective part of community supervision, but at present there is no clear strategy, clarity or guidelines on how the expansion of the use of tagging should be monitored and its impact on the Probation Service.

Disproportionate use of tagging can be counter- productive, particularly for women. Furthermore, small technical breaches that do not amount to reoffending could result in incarceration, thus defeating the objective of the Bill. Earlier this month, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee sent a letter to the Ministry of Justice on the use of electronic monitoring, to which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Foster, will refer.

To succeed, this Bill will require investment in the Probation Service, promotion of the benefits of community orders and a clear strategy on tagging. My final concern is, of course, about the Sentencing Council, which has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon. I will not go into it; all I will say is that, although I recognise the importance of Parliament’s role in overseeing sentencing policy, forcing accountability and monitoring its effectiveness, this measure risks the Executive curtailing the independence of the Sentencing Council. The reaction to what happened before, when we had the other Bill, was rather over the top and this particular measure is, in my view, unnecessary. We should concentrate on sentencing and supporting the Sentencing Council’s independence in any way we can.

Sentencing Bill

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords. I shall express my scepticism about Amendments 60, 61 and 66. They seem to be, in each respect, impractical.

In Amendment 60, I find myself looking at the phrase,

“if enforcement of the requirement is not reasonably practicable”.

That, in one sense, is perfectly sensible, but who is going to determine that? Is it going to be a justiciable issue? Is the Probation Service going to hop up and say: “I’m afraid we can’t do that”? What if the defendant says: “Oh yes, you can”? We would get ourselves into an extraordinary situation. There would be some adverse consequences too, because a judge might be ill-inclined to make such an order, which in principle is highly desirable but there is some doubt as to the possibility of it being enforced. This seems to me to be a tricky road down which to go.

In Amendment 61, I find that the supervising authority must notify all public events within a radius of 20 miles. I suppose the supervising authority for these purposes is the Probation Service, but is the Probation Service to be expected to know about all public events? If it is, it could be quite a burden on it to circulate to all public events. What if others come into play after the order is made? It seems to me, again, that this is rather an impractical suggestion.

Another rather impractical suggestion is to be seen in Amendment 66, where we find that

“the relevant supervising authority must notify all licensed drinking establishments within a radius of 20 miles”.

That implies quite a lot of knowledge on the part of the supervising authority. Perhaps it will have that knowledge, but this will be a tremendous burden on it. These amendments may well have a good purpose behind them, but one asks whether they are really deliverable. Are these the sort of things we should load on to a hard-pressed supervising authority? I think they are manifestly not.

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 101A. This Bill introduces a provision to restrict offenders to a certain geographical area when released on licence, without a requirement for judicial oversight or due process. This amendment would introduce a requirement for the Parole Board to have oversight of new restriction zones for offenders on licence. Such oversight would guard against unintended consequences and provide due process both for victims and for offenders. It would afford victims and offenders an opportunity to make representations to an independent judicial body both before licence conditions are imposed and subsequently, should changes in circumstances arise. For example, a victim may want to live in or enter the restricted area and seek a variation to enable them to do so without fear.

A restriction zone is highly onerous, restricting almost every aspect of a person’s life, including their ability to work, receive specialised medical care and see family. Any application to leave the zone places a huge administrative burden on the authorities. The proposed new restriction is a significant step akin to control orders, now replaced by terrorism prevention and investigation measures, but without any requirement for judicial oversight. Those assessed as a terrorism risk currently benefit from initial oversight from the High Court to allow for an evaluative judgment as to the necessity and proportionality of such conditions and have ongoing opportunities for review.

This amendment seeks to introduce judicial review by the Parole Board of the extension of restriction zones. Its oversight of such conditions would be an important safeguard before such restrictions are imposed on offenders and provide an opportunity for victims to voice any potential impact on them before an independent body. The significant point is that there should be judicial oversight. The Parole Board, in my view, is an appropriate body as it has the expertise and capacity. The High Court would be more expensive and onerous. I appreciate that the Parole Board does not have oversight of licence conditions set for standard determinate sentence prisoners, whereas a restriction could technically be imposed on them. However, there is no reason why standard determinate sentence prisoners could not be referred to the Parole Board if they were being considered for restrictive zone conditions. My principal point is to try to ensure that there is official oversight of these onerous conditions.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, on 20 September there were 26,647 people subject to electronic monitoring, with various types of tags and for a range of different purposes. It has been estimated that this Bill will increase the number of people being tagged by an additional 20,000. In other words, it will more or less double the number of people being tagged.

In our deliberations, we have already heard the Minister make it clear that his understanding is that the vast majority of people who leave prison will be among those 20,000 people. Although it is true that there is guidance which says:

“Offenders released from prison will enter a period of ‘intensive supervision’ tailored to their risk and the type of crime”,


it acknowledges that probation officers will be allowed some discretion as to whether all prisoners leaving will be tagged. My real concern is that probation officers who have heard the Minister say that the vast majority of prisoners will be tagged are going to end up tagging the vast majority of prisoners. That is why I have tabled Amendment 110ZA, the purpose of which is to require

“the relevant authority, when considering whether to include an electronic monitoring requirement as part of a relevant order, to have regard to whether the requirement is necessary to ensure compliance with the order and whether the requirement is proportionate considering the individual’s circumstances”.

The Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee did an investigation into tagging as it currently stands and looked ahead at what might be coming down the track. We heard a number of worrying bits of evidence. For instance, we heard about a 77 year-old woman recalled to prison simply because there was not a tag small enough to fit her. We heard from many people about the stigma attached while they are wearing a tag, even to the point that people who see the tag—which is pretty obvious in many cases—are frightened and believe they are dangerous. None of this helps them re-establish themselves in their local communities.

We also discovered a number of serious ethical issues. For instance, we found evidence that black people are almost twice as likely to be subjected to electronic monitoring as their white counterparts. Even the Home Office acknowledged this in a 2023 equality impact assessment which acknowledged that GPS tagging may disproportionately affect some nationalities. The MoJ told our committee that it, too, accepted that electronic monitoring might not be suitable for all individuals and addressed issues such as work, childcare commitments and so on.

There are also other measures that are rarely taken into account. One very good example is a prisoner I spoke to who had gone into prison because of his gambling addiction—he had stolen money and gone into prison as a result—and then on release had a curfew order. When he said he wanted to go to a meeting at Gamblers Anonymous, he was told he could not because that took place in the evening when the curfew applied. That seems fairly nonsensical to me.

We concluded as a committee that the MoJ, alongside the judiciary and the Probation Service, should conduct regular reviews to ensure electronic monitoring is being used proportionately across all groups, as well as appropriately among vulnerable groups, in which we highlighted women in particular. In tabling this amendment, I wanted to draw attention to the committee’s concern about the blanket assumption that the vast majority of prisoners would be tagged.

We think this is really important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, has said. We will also hear similar arguments from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, who has an amendment on this issue in the next group. In group 7, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will raise the important issue of allowing offenders to have a say in this so that they can point out the impact that a tag of one sort or another may have on their lives—not being able to go to work, childcare issues or whatever. My noble friend on the Front Bench has amendments later on whether driving bans and exclusion zones could impact somebody’s ability to reduce reoffending.

This is simply an opportunity for the Minister to explain that he does not really believe that the vast majority of prisoners will be tagged and that probation officers, with the expertise which he points out they have, will be able to have due discretion over whether tagging or electronic monitoring is appropriate.