Sentencing Bill

Pam Cox Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pam Cox (Colchester) (Lab)]

I am pleased to speak in support of the Bill, which seeks to make our society safer through more effective sentencing of offenders, whether in custody or in the community. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on penal affairs and as a member of the Justice Committee. I also declare a prior professional interest as an historian of criminal justice.

Sentencing is one of the ultimate powers of the state: the power to punish by depriving a citizen of their liberty. It also protects the liberty of others by preventing crime, whether through deterrence or rehabilitation. The history of our prisons system tells us that when prison neither deters nor rehabilitates, prison fails and the public are let down.

The Bill draws on the independent sentencing review conducted by the former Secretary of State for Justice, David Gauke. The review was driven, as we have heard, by a crisis we inherited from the previous Government, with a massive rise in the number of inmates and an utter failure to plan and prepare for them. We have far too many people in prison. The number has doubled over the past 30 years, from 43,000 in 1993 to over 87,000 last year. That rise in inmate numbers has been caused not by an increase in reported crime, but largely by an increase in the use of short custodial sentences and an increase in recalls to prison of those who have breached their licence conditions. When our prisons are packed to the gunwales, they cannot do their vital job of turning offenders away from crime and they cannot offer value for the billions of pounds of public money put into them.

The Gauke review found that, in the year to September 2024, nearly 45,000 people—58% of all custodial sentences—were given a custodial sentence of less than 12 months. It also found that the recall population has more than doubled over the past seven years, rising from around 6,000 to well over 13,000.

In recent months the Justice Committee—I am surrounded by several members of the Committee—has heard shocking evidence about the everyday impacts on a prison system that is running red hot. We have heard about education sessions that cannot be delivered due to lack of space, about substance-free wings being used to house inmates who may not need those services but simply need a cell, and about repairs to crumbling prison buildings that cannot be completed because no decant space is available.

The Bill seeks to tackle that by reviewing short sentences and resetting sentencing culture. It will do that by: as set out in clause 1, a presumption to suspend short custodial sentences of 12 months or less unless exceptional circumstances apply; and, in clause 2, extending the availability of suspended sentences. As we have heard, the Bill will do much more than that. Notably, it will strengthen community justice and refresh the powers of our Probation Service, although I note the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) about the resources needed to sustain that. It also seeks to make it easier for domestic abusers to be flagged across the justice system. That is all to be welcomed.

That said, some proposals in the Bill will require close attention in Committee. For me those include: the procedural mechanisms for flagging domestic abusers, which must be robust; the proposed use of photographs of offenders undertaking paid work, which will need careful consideration; definitions of excess wealth when applying income reduction orders; and the procurement arrangements for enhanced electronic tagging. I hope that Ministers will be willing to engage on those questions as a means of strengthening this much-needed Bill, as this is a much-needed reset of our sentencing processes.