Electronic Monitoring of Offenders

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I hesitate to correct the right reverend Prelate—I know that is not good form, especially not coming from me—but I did not frame the problem as part of the prison capacity problem. I framed the issues around tagging as being related to our earned progression model. This gives me an opportunity to advertise the presentation I have arranged for noble Lords on 23 November on the earned progression model. On reducing reoffending, I should have declared my interest at the beginning, which is that I was the lead non-executive director and chair of the agency board of HMPPS until 2025. During that time, in relation to one of the key aspects that the right reverend Prelate knows is part of reducing reoffending—accommodation—we secured accommodation for 35,000 people leaving prison. That is a substantial contribution to reducing reoffending.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, the Government have the right idea about tagging, and I support the Minister in saying that. However, I think there are serious problems in the operation of it now and the ambition for it for the future. First of all, tags are not being fitted, and if they are not fitted at source, they never get fitted. Probably more important is the future, with geolocation for devices, which allows people to be excluded from areas, as well as to be kept within areas, and sobriety tagging, which stops people drinking when drink is the aggravating factor in their offending pattern. There is no strategy as to how this is going to develop in the future. There is no real connection to the police or, as has already been said, the Probation Service. The current system means that an email goes from Serco or whichever commercial entity it is, and within the next few days, the police might get some information about a rapist who breached the curfew around the rape. That could all be done digitally immediately. I think the ambition is incredibly good—

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Hyde of Bemerton) (Lab)]

I encourage the noble Lord to move to his question, please.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I am getting there.

[Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)]

I remind noble Lords that there are only 10 minutes for this session.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

I know, but if the noble Baroness keeps interrupting, I will not get there.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My question is: what are the Government’s ambition and strategy for rolling out tags in the future? I have not seen one.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I disagreed with the right reverend Prelate and now I am going to disagree with the policeman—former policeman. I do not accept that characterisation. The situation on the specific question that the noble Lord raises about knowing where tagged people are is that by Christmas, because we are rolling out our plan, probation officers in every region will know the whereabouts of people on tags within 10 minutes, so the situation that he describes should not arise. I do not accept that there is no plan. I have already said that this is an important part of the future. It is an important part, for example, of the work that we are doing on domestic abuse in relation to alcohol tags. GPS tagging is improving. This will continue and it is extremely significant.