Sentencing Bill

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member’s constituents for fighting to ensure that we got the balance right. At the heart of this—again, I will come on to this, and I know it will be explored in depth in Committee—the system of exclusion zones we have effectively excludes people from areas, and a lot of women who face domestic violence, who have had stalkers or who have faced violent men have had the situation where someone has been excluded. What we are doing is turning that on its head and restricting the individual to a particular place, house or street, which will give those women much more safety than they have had previously. I hope that her constituents will welcome that, because I know it is something that domestic violence campaigners in particular were calling for.

I want to thank David Gauke and his panel of criminal justice experts for carrying out the independent sentencing review, which laid the groundwork for the Bill. It was a thorough, comprehensive and excellent piece of work. I went through it in detail, obviously, when I got into the job. I also thank my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), for her work in bringing the Bill to this point.

When it comes to prison places running out, the constituents of Members right across the House ask, “Why don’t we just build more prisons?” That is what they ask on the street. In their 14 years in office, how many prison cells did the Conservatives find? I have shadowed the Foreign Affairs brief or been in the Foreign Affairs job for about three and a half or four years, so I could not quite believe the figure when I arrived in the Department. I thought it was wrong. In 14 years in office, 500 cells were all they found—500!

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Earlier at Justice questions, the right hon. Gentleman’s Department attempted to take credit for HMP Millsike—and for its 1,468 places, which were confirmed to me in a written parliamentary answer—even though it was approved under the Conservative Government. Does he acknowledge that that prison was in fact started under the Conservative Government in 2021?

[Mr Lammy]

The truth is that we are building places faster than the Victorians did. [Interruption.] We will have built 14,000 by 2031—

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[Ben Obese-Jecty]

Answer the question!

[Mr Lammy]

If the hon. Gentleman stops baying like a child and lets me come to the point, he asks me about the Conservatives’ record and their record was this: violence up in prisons, self-harm up in prisons, suicide skyrocketing in prisons, assaults rising by 113% and assaults on staff rising by 217%. That was their record. The hon. Gentleman can look at it in detail in the Ministry of Justice figures.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Mr Lammy]

I will always give way to a brass neck.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

The right hon. Gentleman will not remember but I used to live adjacent to his constituency, and I remember what he was like as a local MP. He did not answer my question about the 1,468 places at HMP Millsike. He accuses me of “baying like a child”, and I appreciate that when he is on the back foot, he likes to give a little nervous chuckle to avoid answering the question, but instead of deflecting, will he address the point about the prison places that his Minister claimed this morning were built by his Government when they were in fact started four years ago by the last Conservative Government?

[Mr Lammy]

I have to say, the hon. Gentleman has not challenged the 500 figure. He should read the Ministry of Justice releases. Five hundred! We will have 14,000 by 2031—

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

You won’t.

[Mr Lammy]

We are not in 2031. The hon. Gentleman will be allowed to stand up in 2031 and tell us if we have not achieved that, but it is our ambition and it is what we will achieve.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

rose—

[Mr Lammy]

I have had fun with the hon. Gentleman, but I must make some progress.

The Government are funding the largest expansion since the Victorians. In our first year, we opened nearly 2,500 new places, and, as I said to the hon. Gentleman, we are on track to add 14,000 by 2031. In the next four years alone, we will spend £4.7 billion on prison building, answering the question that our constituents ask: “Where are the prisons?” However, unless we act on sentencing as well, we could still run out of places by early next year. Demand is projected to outstrip supply by many thousands in spring 2028. We cannot simply build our way out. We must reform sentencing and deliver punishment that works.

The Government’s starting point is clear: the public must be protected. More than 16,000 prisoners convicted of the most serious and heinous crimes are serving extended determinate or life sentences. Those serving the former can be released early only by the independent Parole Board, and those serving the latter can only ever be released at its discretion. Nothing in the Bill will change that, because it is punishment that works. Those who commit the gravest crimes will continue to face the toughest sentences.

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[Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in the debate from the perspective of a former serving police officer; I saw first hand how our justice system far too often failed communities and, most importantly, victims—repeat offenders cycling in and out of custody, victims living in fear, and prisons at breaking point. That is why we need urgent reform and why I welcome this Government’s delivering the most significant changes to sentencing in over a generation.

Last summer, prison overcrowding reached an all-time high, as we have heard. Our system was stretched to crisis level, and we cannot let that happen again. The independent sentencing review exposed what many of us working in the system knew all too well: too few prison spaces, too little support for victims and short sentences doing nothing to cut reoffending.

The Conservatives extended sentences for serious crimes by almost two years on average, but built just 500 new places in 14 years. The result was prisons so overstretched that 10,000 offenders had to be released early. That is unacceptable and unsustainable, and it must not happen again. I welcome the Government’s commitment to building 14,000 prison places over the next decade; 2,500 have been added already.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

The expansions of the prison estate by 10,000 additional places through new houseblocks and through refurbishments, including for category D prisons, are rated “red” because the supplier has gone into administration. I heard nothing this morning from the Minister about what the Government are doing to ensure that the plans stay on track. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concerns?

[Matt Bishop]

I would share those concerns, but I have complete faith and confidence in my Front-Bench colleagues—more so than the previous Government.

Building new places alone is not enough. If we are serious about cutting crime, we must change the way in which sentencing works and future-proof the justice system. In the police force, I saw victims living in fear as violent offenders were released early, while petty offenders wasted away in jail cells serving short sentences that did nothing to change their behaviour and nothing to make our communities safer. I also saw the opposite: community sentences—the tough and visible ones that we are talking about—gave offenders a chance to change course. I remember offenders cleaning graffiti, clearing rubbish and, for the first time, making a positive contribution to the very communities that they had once damaged. For some vulnerable offenders, a short prison stay is not a deterrent but a danger. It exposes them to hardened criminals, pulls them into more violent lifestyles and leads them further down a path of reoffending.

That is why the Bill’s provision to suspend short sentences in favour of unpaid work and community service-style punishment is so important. Done properly, such sentences can foster community cohesion by making offenders visibly repay the public for the damage that they have done, reassure victims that wrongdoers are held to account, and deter crime by breaking the cycle of reoffending that short sentences too often fuel.

Another thing that is close to my heart is the idea that victims and survivors deserve a system that keeps them safe and listens to their fears—too often, they do not have that. That is why I welcome the provisions for victims in this Bill. Domestic abuse will now be explicitly called out in court, creating a clear and consistent record that will help to protect victims and manage offenders. Specialist domestic abuse courts will mean stronger support for victims and proper rehabilitation for abusers. Victims of rape and sexual offences will have access to judges’ sentencing remarks and better information. And above all, the purposes of sentencing will now place the protection of victims at the heart of justice. I will continue to advocate for transparency so that victims can understand how sentencing works. After experiencing crime, they should not have to face a justice system that leaves them in the dark. We need to do more for victims, such as giving them unfiltered victims statements and allowing them to say what they want during sentencing, but that is a step for another Bill.

In my policing days, I saw how victims were left unheard and unprotected, and how sentencing failed to deliver justice or reduce crime. The Bill begins to put that right. We are building prison places, reforming sentencing and putting victims—finally—at the centre of justice. That is what the public expects, it is what victims deserve, and it is what this Labour Government will deliver. The Bill is about turning sentencing from a revolving door into a system that protects victims and cuts crime.

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[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

It has become increasingly clear that we see huge discrepancies across sentencing for offences. Comparatively trivial offences receive stiff penalties, while serious crimes appear to go relatively or actually unpunished. There is an increasing feeling that the punishment rarely fits the crime, that the law is soft, that criminals act with impunity and that justice has become hard to come by.

I would like to recount a story about a family from my constituency. Michael Gough was a keen cyclist and had been cycling weekly, on Saturday mornings, with a group of four friends for a number of years. He would head off early, before 8 am, and go out for three to four hours, returning home by lunch time. He rode all over Cambridgeshire, usually covering between 35 km to 50 km on a ride. As a keen cyclist myself, who rides the same roads and the same sort of distances, I know what a joy it is to get out on my bike at the weekend.

On 16 March last year, Mike and the group went out as usual. His daughter, Kim, recalls what happened as the family waited for him to return:

“I had gone to mum’s around 12.25 and we set off shortly after. Mum did think it was unusual dad wasn’t back yet, but he did like to talk so thought he’d probably had an extra cuppa at their cake and cuppa stop. We only made it round the corner when my phone started to ring. Mum picked it up and answered it as she noticed it was dad’s friend Tim calling. I pulled over as soon as I could. Tim had said there had been an accident and dad had been knocked off his bike”.

The family made their way to the scene of the accident on George Street, in Huntingdon town centre.

“We were stood in the street outside Elphicks, opposite Wetherspoons, waiting not having a clue what was going on. Lots of the public were walking up the street and being allowed to walk up and past the scene of the accident to get to where they wanted to go but we were told we had to wait. After a while an officer came down from the scene to talk to us. He asked us to sit in the back of the police car where we were told that dad had been knocked off his bike and had died from his injuries.”

The post-mortem subsequently outlined that Mike had been crushed across his chest and could not be resuscitated.

It was not until December 2024, some nine months later, that the Crown Prosecution Service charged the driver with causing death by careless driving. A further six months later, on 27 June 2025, the driver—Dennis Roberts, aged 74—plead guilty to causing death by careless driving. He was banned from driving with immediate effect. Roberts was given a one-year sentence suspended for two years, a two-year driving ban and 250 hours’ unpaid work, and was ordered to pay court charges of around £200. As Kim says:

“The sentence is within the guidelines of the law, but does the law fit the crime? He has lived his life like normal for 18 months, whilst we have lost our dad, husband, friend, grandad, and lived the last 18 months encompassed in a whirlwind of grief. Even after sentencing he continues to live his life, just with a small inconvenience of not being able to drive and giving up a few hours to work unpaid. How is that justice?”

Mike’s tragic and untimely death is sadly not an outlier, but the current sentencing guidelines for causing death by careless driving are far too lenient, given the impact that such a tragedy clearly has on family and loved ones. The factors determining culpability as “careless” as opposed to “dangerous” are largely subjective and the difference between them is opaque, but it is the factors reducing seriousness or reflecting personal mitigation that I find difficult to understand.

A good driving record is taken into account upon having killed someone through carelessness. The inexperience of the driver is taken into account upon having killed someone through carelessness. Efforts made to assist or to seek assistance for the victim are taken into account upon having killed someone through carelessness. A lack of maturity is taken into account upon having killed someone through carelessness. A mental disorder or learning disability is taken into account upon having killed someone through carelessness. A deprived background is taken into account upon having killed someone through carelessness. The prospects of education are taken into account upon having killed someone through carelessness. What prospects do the victims have now—or their family or dependants?

These mitigating factors beggar belief. This is not a trivial offence or a victimless crime; it is one that devastates lives. Would any one of us here who lost their partner, child or parent to the carelessness of someone’s driving be content to see that person leave court with little more than the inconvenience of having to get a lift home? Furthermore, the minimum level of sentencing starts at a medium-level community order to one year’s custody. The bare minimum must be a custodial sentence, and it must not be suspended. If we are to trivialise a crime with the most serious outcome—that of ultimately taking a life, even through carelessness—then what price stiffer sentences for less serious crimes?

I would not wish anyone to suffer the trauma of enduring such a tragedy, but those who sadly do should at least take comfort that justice has been served. We must stiffen the sentence for causing death by careless driving. We must eliminate the ludicrous mitigation factors that offer too much opportunity for offenders to avoid justice. We must ensure that victims and their families get justice. To prevent others from suffering the lack of justice that Mike and his family have endured, I will table an amendment to address this issue and ensure that Mike’s death was not in vain.