Sentencing Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 21st October 2025 Commons Chamber

Both amendments I have spoken in favour of today would serve to increase trust in the justice system. I encourage colleagues from all parties to consider what they can do to repair the confidence that has been damaged in the last year.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)]

I would like to speak in favour of my new clause 2, as well as new clauses 18 and 22. Fourteen years of Tory austerity have left prisons in crisis. They are severely overcrowded and understaffed. There are significant challenges on the prison estate, including staffing shortages. HMP Liverpool expects to see a massive reduction in staffing due to the impact of the skilled worker visa scheme. Prisons were forced to take emergency release measures to prevent a complete system breakdown.

There is much to appreciate in this Bill, and more to wait for from the Law Commission’s sentencing review, but I echo the concerns raised: without sufficient resourcing and transparent, clear guidance, the ambitions of the Bill risk failing. We know that over half of those serving a sentence of less than 12 months reoffend, and women prisoners disproportionately receive shorter sentences. The link between short sentences and reoffending contributes greatly to the pressures on prison capacity. Mental health treatment, alcohol and drug misuse treatment and other rehabilitative services bring wider social benefits and protect the public far better than the current system by tackling the causes of crime. The organisation JUSTICE has stated that without proper resourcing, staffing and funding, rehabilitative services will remain too overstretched to be effective. In August 2025, a shortfall of 10,000 Probation Service staff was recorded. The Bill’s impact assessment estimates the need for an additional 500 probation staff each year. Will the Minister reassure Members that he understands the scale of the task ahead, and outline his commitment to allocating adequate resources to ensure that our frontline services can deliver the provisions and vision of the Bill?

New clause 22, tabled by the hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), seeks to provide leave to appeal where there has been change in the law that is material to the conviction, and where the application is served before the conviction is spent. A version of the new clause was first moved by the former MP for Huddersfield, my predecessor as chair of the all-party group for miscarriages of justice. It was written by Charlotte Henry, a formidable campaigner for Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association. I have long campaigned against the abuses of joint enterprise legal doctrine, and I take this opportunity to recognise the fantastic work undertaken by JENGbA over the past 15 years. The Justice Secretary previously provided commitments to JENGbA, and I hope that he will support new clause 22 today.

My new clause 2 seeks to provide oversight mechanisms for electronic monitoring, which the Bill proposes increasing hugely. The plan is to create a prison outside a prison, but although that has potential to ease the overcrowding crisis on the estate, it could give rise to significant risks, without proper oversight and accountability. Tagging plays an important part in our criminal justice system, and if used correctly and ethically, it can help reduce crime and protect the public, while giving victims confidence that justice is being served. However, there are numerous problems, and those must be addressed before any further expansion, particularly the massive profits made by private sector companies.

We must analyse the purposes of tagging, from public protection to being a punishment in itself. The Bill expands powers to ban offenders from specific places or certain activities, even when those have no connection with the offence. That is one glaring example of where tagging technologies risk leading to greater unchecked restrictions on our liberties. Failing private-sector contracts are at the heart of the problem, particularly those with Serco and G4S, now acquired by Allied Universal, which has a murky and well documented history of over-charging and under-delivering, and which has been fined tens of millions of pounds as a result. I agree with the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the other place, which last year said it was “remarkable” that Serco and G4S had been reappointed to provide tagging services after they had

“been investigated by the Serious Fraud Office and subject to fines for misconduct and a deferred prosecution agreement”.

The issue is not only money; we are giving those companies more and more control of sensitive and clearly transformational criminal justice technology. Instead, we should use this decisive moment to bring tagging firmly into the public sector Probation Service, as is common in the rest of Europe, and out of the hands of failing and fraudulent privateers.

The Government have promised the biggest insourcing in a generation, and if they fail to insource these services, they should consider demands by the unions to make the companies that make and provide the tags also fit the tags, pre-release. That is in my new clause 2(2)(c). I remind Members of the appalling case of Gaie Delap, a Just Stop Oil activist in her late 70s, who spent extra weeks in prison because Serco could not find a tag to fit her. The companies making millions from these contracts should be sanctioned, so that they deliver services correctly. They should not be allowed to rely on overstretched prison staff to pick up their work. Will the Minister assure the House on that point? The fragmented privatised system creates huge delays and inefficiencies, and provides financial challenges for the people whom it supervises, who, for example, have to charge tags without having access to electricity, or money to pay for it.

I support new clause 18, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), which calls for an annual report detailing the use of tagging, and including information on the number of tags fitted, the number of malfunctioning devices, the rate of compliance and the cost of administrating the system. That important data must be freely available if the public and unions are to have any confidence in electronic monitoring.

Justice unions and the frontline workers whom they represent are calling for greater oversight, accountability and transparency in monitoring performance, and for any failures to be addressed immediately, not covered up by profit-hungry corporations. I join them in calling on the Government to commit to a full review of the feasibility of all tagging being managed by the Probation Service in the future, in a system run for public good, not private profit. In keeping with our promise to oversee the greatest wave of insourcing for a generation, now is the time for this Labour Government to bring this increasingly vital public service fully into the public sector, where it belongs, so I ask hon. Members to support my amendments.

[Luke Taylor]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) on his clear and comprehensive explanation of the flaws of short sentences. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who is no longer in his place, gave us some insight into why we have ended up in such a mess: Government modelling was not able to reconcile the removal of prison places with rules for increased sentences. The result was more demand for prison places. The net figure of 482 prison places gained since 2010, given by the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns), shows the utterly damning mistakes that were made during the Conservatives’ time in government.

I will speak in favour of new clauses 6 and 39. In Christmas 2021, Lillie Clack’s family were woken by police, informing them that Lillie had been involved in a traffic accident on Christmas morning. It was caused by a driver under the influence, who was speeding at up to 100 mph, and who failed to stop for the police. Following the accident, heroic local residents rushed to the scene with fire extinguishers, but sadly Lillie died in hospital three days later. Lillie’s family have campaigned tirelessly since then for Lillie’s law, which would result in licences being suspended immediately upon a charge, and a lifetime ban from driving when drivers are convicted of causing death by dangerous driving or by careless driving.

I speak in favour of new clause 6, tabled by the hon. and gallant Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), which would apply the lifetime ban, and in favour of new clause 39, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), on the suspension of a person’s driving licence while they are on bail for a driving-related offence. Together, those new clauses would deliver the objectives of Lillie’s law and provide both punishment and deterrent for those who step into a car under the influence, or who do not take the care that is required when driving, which is a privilege, and not a right.

I will speak briefly in favour of new clause 30. I encourage hon. Members from across the House to support the long-overdue resentencing of all prisoners currently held under a sentence of imprisonment for public protection. At the end of 2024, more than 2,000 people were held under an IPP, which is an ongoing scandal and a tragedy for those individuals. The Government claim that the jail terms are a grave injustice, but they are failing to move quickly enough. This new clause would force them to act. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) so clearly explained, there is a need for action, so I hope his colleagues can be persuaded to support new clause 30, in the absence of another measure to address the issue, which is badly required.

Finally, I will mention new clause 40, on the provision of training during the period when an individual is on remand. We must enable rehabilitation wherever possible. Even if the new clause is not taken forward today, I join colleagues and the hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) in encouraging the Government to look at the current situation.