Sentencing Bill

Freddie van Mierlo Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Lammy)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It is my pleasure to open this debate—my first since being appointed Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. It is an honour to be back on this beat and to take up this brief. Justice has always been at the heart of my politics over the past 25 years. Far from being abstract, it runs through every aspect of our lives: our education, our health and the opportunities that people have to succeed. It has shaped my life, from studying and practising law to serving as a Minister in the old Department for Constitutional Affairs, and of course as shadow Justice Secretary.

During David Cameron’s period as Prime Minister, I was asked to conduct an independent review on racial disparity in the justice system. I grew up as a working-class kid in Tottenham and saw too many young black men end up on the wrong side of the law. I represented Tottenham during the 2011 London riots, addressing at first hand the destruction caused when peaceful protests were hijacked by violent criminals. During the Lammy review I also saw the state of our prisons, which are operating at close to maximum capacity, putting the public at risk of harm.

Public protection is exactly why we have introduced the Bill before us today. At the heart of it is the threat that the previous Conservative Government left us with: that our prisons could run of out places entirely, leaving us with nowhere to put dangerous offenders, police without the capacity to make arrests, courts unable to hold trials and a breakdown of law and order unlike anything we have seen in modern times. As Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, I will never allow that to happen, because the first duty of Government is to keep the public safe.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

I broadly welcome the Bill’s provisions, which will take on the mess that the Conservatives left behind. Does the right hon. Member agree that it is important to get the right balance between the purpose of prison, particularly for violent crime, which is to rehabilitate criminals, but also to provide a deterrent and punishment, and maintaining public safety and delivering restorative justice?

[Mr Lammy]

That is a very good summary. We must have punishment that works, and I will talk about that later in my speech.

When we look at the record of the previous Government, and I have looked at the figures very closely, we see that the recidivism rates were running at 60%, 65%, 68%. Something is not working when people go back to prison over and over again. I got the Department to give me the figures: over 5 million offences. All those offences have victims. We have to do something about it, and the Bill will begin to get us into the right place, because the first duty of government is to keep the public safe.

But the Bill is not only about preventing an emergency; it also takes us back to the purpose of sentencing, which must be, as has been said, punishment that works—punishment that works for victims, who deserve to see perpetrators face retribution; punishment that works for society, which wants criminals to return to society less dangerous, not more; and punishment that works to prevent crime.