Sentencing Bill

Second Reading

That the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, it is my pleasure to bring this Bill for its Second Reading. I start by thanking the former Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, and his team for his independent sentencing review; this has informed many measures in the Bill. I thank another former Lord Chancellor, too, the now Home Secretary, for her work in getting us to this point. I also want to thank the many noble Lords who have engaged with me on the Bill. The input I have received has been of great value and generally very positive as we take this legislation forward. Of course, I want to pay tribute to our incredible prison and probation staff, who have worked, often unseen and under-appreciated, through an incredibly difficult time. I see and appreciate what they do every day, and I am proud to call every one of them a colleague.

I also want to pay tribute to Baroness Newlove, whose sad passing I learned of today. As both Victims’ Commissioner and Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, Baroness Newlove brought unparalleled experience and dedication to her roles. She championed the rights of victims and witnesses and held agencies to account. Her leadership shaped the victims’ code, strengthened victims’ voices in the criminal justice system, and ensured that the Victims and Prisoners Bill progressed with victims’ interests at its heart. She was an extraordinary public servant whom I was fortunate to know well and admired immensely, and whose life’s work and legacy are defined by courage, compassion and an unwavering commitment to justice.

Before I turn to specific measures in the Bill, it is important to understand the context of why it is needed. When the new Government came to power in July last year, we inherited a crisis in our prisons and probation service. We were days away from running out of places entirely; days away from the police having to prioritise which criminals to arrest, the courts having to make impossible decisions, and the criminal justice system buckling under insurmountable pressure; days away from our criminal justice system failing to deliver the one thing it was for—delivering justice.

We took urgent steps to prevent that catastrophe, and we have embarked on the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era, delivering 14,000 new places by 2031. However, if we do not take further action, it is only a matter of time before we will be back here again. In a few months, we will again be facing prisons on the brink, having to take emergency measures and, again, asking, “How did we get here?” That is why this Bill is vital. It does not kick the can further down the road, and it does not shy away from making tough decisions to keep the public safe. Instead, it will end the cycle of crisis once and for all. It will build a justice system that victims can have confidence in, and it will bring stability and sustainability to our prisons and our justice system. More than that, it will restore purpose to sentencing. It will deliver punishment that works by following the evidence of what works; that works for victims, delivering them the justice they deserve; that works for society—we want better citizens, not better criminals; and that works for the public, delivering safer streets and protection from crime.

My Lords, I say at the outset how sorry I was to learn of the death of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. She will be much missed around the House. She was a powerful champion for victims.

I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the Bill, but I must say that it does not live up to the expectations one might have of a Sentencing Bill. It is not a plan for safer streets or a stronger justice system; it is, in essence, a plan to release offenders early because our prisons are full. The Government present this as a reform, but much is, in truth, a knee-jerk reaction to the challenge of managing prison capacity, and it is one that risks public safety.

The centrepiece of the Bill is the presumption that any sentence of 12 months or less will be suspended, so, in practice, short custodial sentences will all but disappear. Figures suggest that around 43,000 offenders will avoid prison altogether. Among them will be repeat burglars, serial shoplifters and sex offenders. This is not sentencing reform; it is surrender. How can any Government who claim to be tough on crime defend that?

The Government say this will apply only to “non-violent, non-sexual” offences, but as any practitioner knows, many assaults, domestic abuse cases and sexual offences fall at or below that 12-month threshold. Those offenders will now walk free. To allow this will be a profound failure of the state’s duty to protect its citizens—unless it has the unintended effect, of course, that courts increase nominal sentences to override the presumption. Will we in fact see an increase in the number of immediate sentences of 15 to 18 months? That would be an unintended and perhaps unfortunate consequence, but we know how human behaviour reacts.

The Bill also reduces the time to be served in custody. For most offenders, automatic release will come after just 33% of the sentence—five months of a 15-month term. The rest will be served in the community, supervised, in theory, by the hard-pressed Probation Service. It has been predicted there will in fact be an immediate 6% rise in crime. As Cicero said: to what good? That is not sentencing reform; it is a policy of early release with rising crime the consequence.

My Lords, I had hoped that a more favourable reception might have been accorded to the Bill by the Conservative Front Bench, given the respect that many of us have for David Gauke and the work he did on the independent review, and the respect we have for the Minister, with his practical experience in this area. I entirely share the view that there are parts of the Bill that need careful scrutiny in Committee, but it is an attempt to deal with an appalling and farcical situation of releases by an overworked and understaffed Prison and Probation Service trying to deal with overcrowded prisons. The figures demonstrate that we reached the point where we had almost 100% usage of prison cells. There was no scope, therefore, for sensible use of them.

We are in an appalling situation, which has been driven by many years of trying to talk tough on sentencing. What that involved, and I am afraid it came from both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party at different times, was asserting that it was better to spend money badly on imprisoning the wrong people for longer than to spend the money effectively on rehabilitation, to which the Minister has rightly devoted much of his life.

There are good things in the Bill, including the identification of domestic abuse by the court, which, as the Minister pointed out, would be seen only by probation staff and others who have reason to be concerned where this arises. That is very welcome. The presumption against short custodial sentences is very welcome. The direct reference to the protection of victims in “purposes of sentencing” is a welcome inclusion, particularly in the light of the death of Baroness Newlove, who campaigned so vigorously for victims. It is particularly good that it appears in this Bill.

Robust community sentences, which the Bill facilitates by providing more means by which they can be made robust, are extremely important. Unless we achieve wide acceptance by the public of robust community sentences, led by some acceptance in the media that they may be the most sensible solution for some offenders, we will not change the upward drift of the prison population. This is extremely important and I am glad that it is in the Bill.

My Lords, I start by declaring some interests. I was on the independent panel chaired by David Gauke which produced a preliminary short review in February, History and Trends in Sentencing. I shall return to that, if I may. It then produced a final report in May, many of the recommendations of which underpinned the proposals in the Bill.

I was also president of the Sentencing Council for six years while serving as Lord Chief Justice. The Bill has two clauses relating to the Sentencing Council. I broadly welcome the proposals relating to sentencing. One or two of them might be tidied up but it will come as no surprise to your Lordships that I regard the clauses relating to the Sentencing Council as misconceived.

As is well known, the impetus for this sentencing legislation flows from our prisons being full. There is no prospect of capacity being expanded sufficiently to cope with the demand in the coming years. Urgent steps must be taken, or the system will fall over.

There are a number of reasons why the prison population has doubled between 1993 and today to now over 87,000 people. At the heart of them has been sentence inflation. In 1993, the average custodial sentence for indictable offences was 16 months; by June 2024, it was 22 and a half months. There have been substantial increases in the minimum terms that those subject to life sentences must serve, driven by legislative change in 2003 by Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act, which governed murder. That pulled up all sentences for violent offending, which in turn fed over into sentences more generally. The number of life sentences has substantially increased, as have sentences over 10 years, despite serious crime having fallen. The detail is in the history and trends report to which I referred.

Parliament has also repeatedly legislated to increase maximum sentences. This has all happened at a time when political and much public discourse has focused on the punitive element of sentencing while marginalising other important purposes of sentencing, which include reducing reoffending and rehabilitating offenders. With respect to my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, we have heard little of that this afternoon.

My Lords, I declare an interest as Anglican bishop to His Majesty’s prisons in England and Wales. I, too, pay tribute to the late Baroness Newlove, not least in her role as Victims’ Commissioner. I want to echo so much of what the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, have just said, which has lifted my spirits.

There is much to welcome in this Bill. For example, as has been said, we know in general that short custodial sentences do more harm than good, so I am delighted that we are now seeing some evidence-based policy-making rather than policy shaped by media headlines. We also need to clarify our long-term vision and aims. As a Christian, I believe that every human being is made in the image of God and is created to live in interdependent relationship, and broken relationship sits at the heart of all brokenness. Strong relationship sits at the heart of all that is good and transformative. I thank the Minister for his introduction, but I am dismayed that we are setting the context of this Bill as overcrowded prisons and a current crisis. Surely our long-term vision and big picture is not simply about more prisons or even decent prisons, but ultimately about strengthening communities so that people flourish in a network of healthy and safe relationships.

I am therefore hugely concerned by the piecemeal selection of David Gauke’s recommendations from his independent sentencing review and our failure to look at that big, long-term picture. For example, including victims in the statutory purpose of sentencing is welcome, but, if we want to respond well to victims and reduce the number of victims in the future, we need to pay attention to where relationship has been broken in people’s lives as well as in their offending. When sentencing, the place of trauma needs to be addressed for offender as well as victim. It is interesting that many people are both, and I wonder where that leaves us when we talk about putting victims first.

My Lords, I declare an interest as the non-executive chairman of Leicester law centre, and I am privileged to serve on your Lordships’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

My first speech in your Lordships’ House was on sentencing. It was a pretty standard maiden speech, I am afraid, although the late Lord Longford was nice enough to say a few kind words. That was 27 years ago. Now, in November 2025, I am speaking on sentencing again.

I have to admit that although there have been many changes to sentencing policy, some good and some not so good, it is not until now that the approach that prevailed in 1998 has really changed. At long last, we now have a Bill that thoughtfully and sensibly tackles the fundamental problems of an almost broken system, one that can fairly be said to have failed. As examples, one fault is that there are just too many people in prison, women as well as men. Another is that they are there for far too long; and a third, even more depressing in some ways than the first two, is that rehabilitation is too often an aspiration rather than a reality. The results are all around us: our prisons are absolutely full, while too many ex-prisoners reoffend and find themselves straight back in jail.

The House will therefore probably not be surprised to hear that I warmly welcome the Bill, the principles behind it and the tone that it sets. I am also proud of the Government who have brought it forward. I want it to become a new chapter in our sentencing policy, one which is of our time and up to date and is not a victim of a long-standing and often phoney war between the political parties, as has already been said in the House today. How much time have we lost in the last 30 years by putting up the ante between Governments and Oppositions, as if to say, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the toughest of us all”?

The irony is that, until 30 years ago, there was not this battle to be the hard man. There were, of course, different opinions and debates, but basically, and at heart, there was an agreement and understanding that going for the lowest common denominator was not in anybody’s interests. The Bill seems to be a serious attempt to find an approach that can be supported by all people of good will and intelligence. Is that too much to ask? Of course, I accept that the Bill is not perfect. The implementation of its proposals will not come close to success unless it is given the backing, including the financial backing, that it needs. For that success to happen, the Probation Service is absolutely key, as many speakers from around the House have already said.

My Lords, I hope that I will be forgiven if I concentrate more on what should be in the Bill than what is in it. For the purposes of today’s debate, I intend to focus primarily on sentences of imprisonment for public protection, or IPPs. Before I do so, I would like to make some brief remarks about other aspects that relate to sentencing, and also to the prison system.

We debated deportation orders last week, and voted on them last night. Most people in this country— but not, I think, the majority of this House—favour deportation orders, subject to two important provisos. The first is this: it is highly desirable that a foreign national sentenced to a serious period of imprisonment should be required to serve a substantial part of that sentence in the United Kingdom before deportation. The reason is that there is too great a chance that on deportation, the receiving country—unless there is an appropriate agreement in place—will simply let him walk free. That is what has happened to Mr Hadush Kebatu on his release to Ethiopia. The second proviso is this: in order to satisfy the principle of proportionality, an automatic deportation order should arise only in the event of serious offences, marked by a significant period of imprisonment. The threshold period will be a matter for debate.

My next general point relates to non-custodial sentences, of which I am a very strong supporter. However, in order to reassure the public, the non-custodial sentence must serve the public interest in a very obvious way, and must also be enforced with rigour. That means a properly financed and resourced Probation Service, among other things. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said about the Probation Service, and I welcome the fact that financing has been significantly increased.

My next point is to emphasise the importance of purposeful out-of-cell activity for prisoners in custody. I know the Minister agrees with this. There should be much more concentration on remedial education and training for employment. Far too many prisoners are spending far too long locked up in their cells, and that is quite wrong.

My Lords, before I make my remarks, I declare two interests. I am a member of the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Lords, which is so admirably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Foster. I am also an officeholder of the All-Party Group on Penal Affairs.

The Bill sets out important reforms to reduce the unnecessary use of custodial sentences, tackle over- crowding, reduce offending and protect victims. I welcome all that, but I want to highlight some of my concerns, which I hope we can deal with in Committee.

The Bill quite rightly bolsters suspended sentences. However, we must guard against more use of suspended sentences instead of community orders, because evidence shows that suspended sentences are imposed on those who should have received community orders. Community orders are not a soft option. With the right investment, intensive community sentences can succeed where short sentences fail. We know that community orders are flexible and allow individuals to tackle the root causes of offending by engaging with mental health, alcohol and drug treatment while retaining their work, home and community ties.

We know that the use of community sentences has more than halved in recent years. We need to encourage greater use of community orders, not less. We also know that female offenders in particular benefit from community orders. The committee on which I sit published a report, Cutting Crime: Better Community Sentences, which highlighted a number of best practices in this area—which, given the time, I will not repeat. If we do not use these sentences, it will defeat the Bill’s objective by simply delaying custodial sentences.

While greater use of community orders is desirable, we also know that, as others have said, their full potential will not be maximised until the Probation Service is fully functional. The Government’s commitment to invest £700 million is welcome, but there will be a shortfall of staff and a time lag in getting staff levels and training up to speed to meet the Bill’s expectations. Furthermore, the Probation Service needs community-based voluntary organisations to be effective. When services are provided locally, various agencies can co-operate effectively. In our report, we argue:

My Lords, I must add to the tributes to that great, brave and humane soul, Baroness Newlove.

It is, as we have heard, over 30 years since two political pugilists faced off from opposite Dispatch Boxes in the other place and triggered a law and order arms race from which our criminal justice system and the society it is supposed to serve have yet to recover. For decades, this excited expectations that Governments could legislate their way to headlines and re-election by diminished due process and tougher sentencing. They purported to do this even when imposing economic austerity, in the form of cuts to living standards and the justice system in particular, as well as youth, mental health and addiction services. Today, we reap the bitter harvest in both the human and the financial costs of a justice and penal system that is on its knees, in which few members of the public have faith.

By contrast, and with no disrespect to the elected Chamber, my noble friend Lord Timpson is a perfect example of the finest Government Ministers sitting in your Lordships’ House, bringing a wealth of experience, expertise and vocation for genuine reform. Not, perhaps, since the fictional progressive prison warden Henry Brubaker, played by the late Robert Redford in the 1980 Hollywood film, went inside disguised as a convict, has one man attempted such a brave reforming challenge. Of course, my noble friend comes disguised not as an inmate but as a politician. None the less, I pay tribute to him, and indeed to the much respected Conservative Lord Chancellor, David Gauke, whose sentencing review has inspired so much of the Bill before us. In particular, I commend a focus on preventing and reducing crime and diverting people away from prison so far as possible. Such aims are nothing short of a sea change from decades of crime and sentencing legislation drafted, if not quite on the back of a cigarette packet, on the back of rainforests of press releases full of punitive talk and sentence inflation.