Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Foster of Bath]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Justice and Home Affairs Committee Better prisons: less crime (1st Report, HL Paper 153).

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, as the chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, it is a pleasure to lead this debate. I look forward to the five maiden speeches from new Members; I welcome them all. I am delighted that they have chosen the committee’s report on prisons, Better Prisons: Less Crime, for their first outings.

I thank all members of the committee for their contributions to the report, and I am pleased to see so many of them here. We were splendidly supported by our specialist adviser, Alex South, a former prison officer and author, and by our office team: clerk David Shiels, policy analysts Rhouda Elalfy and Olek Hola-Peryer, media officer Aneela Mahmood, and operations officer Amanda McGrath.

During our inquiry we visited two prisons, Belmarsh and Isis. I pay tribute to the work of the dedicated prison staff and those in the third sector who work in incredibly difficult circumstances doing difficult, life-changing work. I am delighted that the Government plan to act on our recommendation for a Prison Service medal for exceptional service. I am grateful to all who contributed evidence, especially the many prisoners who sent us handwritten letters sharing their invaluable experiences and insights.

Sadly, most witnesses painted a depressing picture: the prison system is

“operating either in or at the verge of crisis most of the time”,

it is “disheartening and saddening”, and worrying to the extreme—all flavour of what we heard during the inquiry. I know that the Minister is working tirelessly to improve the state of our prisons, and I applaud him for it, but six months on from the publication of our report, the situation facing prisoners and prison staff remains grim. Most worrying is the very high level of reoffending by those who leave prison—40% of ex-prisoners reoffend within a year; for those in prison for less than a year, it is over 65%. Shockingly, in the year to June 2025, a staggering 40,000 former prisoners were recalled to prison—a 32% rise on the previous year.

We concluded that the purpose of prison should be much clearer and recommended that the Minister’s own words should be used—that is, that the purpose of prison should be

“to punish people, to protect the public and to reduce reoffending”.

But at present our prisons are failing to reduce reoffending and so failing to protect the public. We argued, therefore, that the punishment for a prisoner is the loss of liberty and that the main focus of the work in prisons should be to reduce reoffending through what is sometimes called rehabilitation or purposeful activity, of which currently there is far too little.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons uses purposeful activity as one of its four healthy establishment tests, yet it continues to be the worst performing metric. The chief inspector found that almost three-quarters of prisons inspected were poor or not sufficiently good at providing purposeful activity. Some of our other findings gave pointers as to why that is. In addition to overcrowding and lack of clarity about the purpose of prisons, our report found limited autonomy for prison governors, who were stifled by bureaucracy; a wholly inadequate staff recruitment and vetting procedure, and subsequent inadequate prisoner officer assessment and training arrangements; a huge backlog of much-needed repair and renovation; and a sense of complacency within the MoJ and HMPPS, and inadequate accountability arrangements.

No wonder there is little focus on purposeful activity. After all, measures such as education and skills training, or measures to help prisoners with their mental health, or with drug, alcohol or gambling addictions, are hard to provide in overcrowded, understaffed, dilapidated and underresourced prisons where governors have inadequate freedom to govern. Too often, prisoners can spend up to 23 hours a day in cramped cells, with little to help them lead constructive, crime-free lives when they leave. It is these conditions which also lead to boredom, self-harm, frustration and increased violence in our prisons. All this costs the taxpayer £54,000 per year per prisoner, with seemingly little benefit.

We considered each of the barriers and made recommendations to reduce them. On overcrowding, we largely welcome the Gauke review and the measures that flowed into the Sentencing Act from it. However, some measures will place increased strain on an already overstretched Probation Service, and we remain sceptical about whether the planned £700 million over four years for the Probation Service will be sufficient. Last week’s PAC report suggests that it agrees. It said the service was under “significant strain”, seriously impeding its ability to protect the public and reduce reoffending.

Nevertheless, we especially welcome plans to introduce community sentences instead of most prison sentences of under 12 months. We made just this proposal in one of our earlier reports, where we pointed out that well-run, probation-led community sentences have lower levels of reoffending and cost significantly less. Under the structure of HMPPS, the Prison Service and the Probation Service are linked. If, with increased resources and staffing, the Probation Service can successfully keep more people out of prison, the Prison Service can then more easily improve purposeful activity for those still sent to prison.

But the Sentencing Act measures alone are insufficient. It is estimated that, over time, they will reduce the prison population demand by 7,500, and the new prison building programme will deliver 14,000 new places by 2031. But despite all that, it is still estimated that, by 2029, the prison population will have increased by 2,000. That is why some of our other recommendations are so important and why the committee was so disappointed by the Government’s rather complacent response.

The Government accepted or partially accepted 34 of our 35 recommendations. That might seem like a job well done but, alas, that is far from the truth. The Government claim that many of the recommendations are already work in progress. Yet, in the majority of these cases, we fail to see either the work or the progress. For example, the Government accepted our recommendation to implement women’s leadership groups and support for female staff but then bizarrely, implying nothing further was actually needed, went on to say:

“HMPPS have reviewed our policies and are content that they are sufficient to address the needs of women”.


Our recommendations regarding prison governors also illustrate the point. Just as a good head teacher, with the right support, can transform a school, so too can a prison governor, with the right support, transform a prison. But prison governors need the freedom to act, so we called for increased governor autonomy so that those running prisons, who best understand the needs of their staff, prisoners and community, can implement desperately needed changes. In this case, the work in progress was a report on previous efforts that had not gone anywhere near what the committee or many governors were calling for. To ensure that the governor’s vision can be clearly communicated to staff, we argued for measures that would enable greater visibility of governors around the prison. The Government agreed, but offered nothing concrete. Surely the move to build mega-prisons, such as the 1,700 place HMP Welland Oaks, will serve only to exacerbate the problem.

I hope the Minister, when he winds up, will assure us that the committee’s pessimism is misplaced. But our pessimism is not just that of a discontented suitor who has been rejected; others share it. In the other place, the Justice Committee, referencing the Government’s response to our report, noted:

“It is promising to hear that the Government recognises the value of Governor autonomy, but it is unclear what specific action it will be taking to improve it”.


Benjamin Franklin once said:

“Well done is better than well said”.


When he winds up, can the Minister say what actions in relation to governor autonomy we can look out for?

The responses to other recommendations have been equally disappointing. Clearly, having sufficient well-trained, motivated and supportive staff working in our prisons is vital. But with the prison population rising, it is extremely concerning—but, frankly, not surprising—that so many prison officers are leaving, some after less than a year in service, and that there has been a significant fall in the number of people joining. For example, in the past year there has been a loss of 1,000 band 3 to band 5 prison officers—the ones walking the wings and interacting with prisoners every day. In short, there are more prisoners but fewer staff, and the remaining staff are often disillusioned and demoralised, as evidenced by the very high levels of absence through sickness. An average of two and a half weeks is lost in sickness—often mental health issues—per officer each year. That is simply unsustainable.

The MoJ has at least now resurrected an earlier recruitment campaign that promotes a career in the Prison Service. It says:

“An extraordinary job. Done by someone like you”.


The reality, however, is that a career in the Prison Service is not for everyone, and the recruitment process should reflect that. After all, our report was clear that the current role of prison officers is defined by firefighting and crisis management—asking them to do more with less. No wonder, then, that the number of prisoners released in error has sky-rocketed by 128% this year, from 115 to 262. I hope the Minister will tell us what progress is being made to introduce a digital solution to the problem.

More significantly, we call for a drastic overhaul of officer recruitment and vetting. We were horrified to discover that there are no face-to-face interviews. It is all done online. Very few of those being interviewed had ever been inside a prison, and prison leaders have almost no say about who works in their prison. Despite the high drop-out rate, and all the other evidence pointing to its failings, we were nevertheless told by HMPPS that the process is “robust”. Some noble Lords may have seen reports of a 17 year-old child who, despite being underage, got through the recruitment and vetting procedures, and then was given the task of looking after murderers and terrorists in HMP Erlestoke. That is hardly evidence of a robust system. Does the Minister think that it is robust, and can he tell us what is being done to ensure that staff are properly vetted, that they are aware of the unique challenges of life on the wings and are ready to work?

We also made recommendations about training and support for prison officers. It surely cannot be right, for example, that almost all formal assessment of prison officers’ work has been abandoned. Again, the Government response was muted, and that is a polite way of putting it. Can the Minister be more positive and tell us what changes in training and support are being planned?

One final concern is on the response to our several recommendations about activities to reduce reoffending. Given the Minister’s previous work in this area, there was an enthusiastic response in words but, unfortunately, actions contradicted them. No sooner was the ink dry on the Government’s response than we started to hear about cutbacks in the education provision in many prisons; this provision has been shown to significantly help to reduce reoffending.

Writing about the new prison education contracts in October last year, the chief inspector reported that he had been told that—due to inflationary increases, and some of the funds being used for a new IT system—there would be effective average cuts of 25%. In fact, some prison leaders had told him that cuts in their prison had reached 60%. We now know that around 300 prison education staff have been made redundant. It is one thing to ignore a committee’s recommendation, but it seems perverse that the Government are ignoring their own research; this research shows how important education is to reducing reoffending, and yet they are ploughing ahead with cuts to it. This is not the only failing in providing appropriate purposeful activities: support for inmates with mental health or addiction problems is woeful, and skills training is patchy, doing little to prepare inmates for employment outside. It is prisoners and the public who will suffer the consequences. We need more purposeful activity, not less, and I hope that the Minister can give us some good news about the future situation. We have waited far too long for it.

Since its founding in 1982, the inspectorate has been highly critical of the lack of purposeful activity in prison. In the first ever inspector’s report the chief inspector, Sir James Hennessy, wrote:

“We believe there are powerful reasons why the Prison Department must ensure that an inmate does not spend day after day in blank inactivity; he should be kept occupied for a normal working day at work, education, or some other constructive activity”.


It was not happening 43 years ago and, sadly, is still not happening. It shows why inspectors’ reports should be acted upon more often.

The evidence we receive points to a system beset with problems. Piecemeal and gradual change will not suffice to fix them. HMPPS needs to go further and faster, but the Government’s response to our report was disappointing. It illustrated our concern that the MoJ and HMPPS are far too complacent about what is happening in our prison estate. This is in marked contrast to the Minister. I welcome his zeal and practicality in addressing the many issues in our prisons. I just hope that, in time, his department starts to have the same approach and puts its energies into ensuring the wide-scale provision of measures to reduce reoffending. Only then can we truly have better prisons and less crime. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, not least those who have given us five excellent and thought-provoking maiden speeches. I am sure that all will make valuable contributions to the work of your Lordships’ House. I was somewhat concerned on their behalf by the opening remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hyde of Bemerton, who instead of praising the maiden speeches and leaving it at that, went on to put fear into their hearts by telling them that they now have to go away and come up with their difficult second album. Based on their performances today, I am confident that they are up to the task and we look forward to hearing them.

It is often said that a society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members. Prisoners, despite having committed acts deserving of opprobrium, often represent some of the most vulnerable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, pointed out. Frankly, at present we are failing them. We are failing the staff working in our prisons and the public, not least because we are failing to help prisoners prepare for life outside prison or to provide adequate measures to reduce reoffending. As I pointed out, it was happening 43 years ago and we have heard that it was happening 20 years ago. Sadly, it is happening today.

Despite the gloomy picture that I and our report paint of the situation, I have genuine optimism about the future. One of the reasons for that optimism is the Minister. He clearly gets it. All noble Lords who spoke clearly get it. The task is to persuade the rest of the Government to get it and ensure that the Minister and his team are provided with the support to take forward all the recommendations in our report, which I hope will not stay on a dusty shelf. I am sure it will not because, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, pointed out, I will be having a dialectical relationship with the Minister to ensure that. I am optimistic. I hope the Minister is around for a very long time. I thank him for what he has done and for his energy and enthusiasm. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this excellent debate.

Motion agreed.