Sentencing Bill

Committee (3rd Day)

Amendment 88

88: After Clause 19, insert the following new Clause— “An annual report on prison capacity(1) The Lord Chancellor must, as soon as practicable after the end of each financial year, make a report on prison capacity.(2) When reporting on prison capacity under this section, the Lord Chancellor must include the available data on—(a) prison population projections,(b) projection for the supply of prison places,(c) information on prison service staffing, and(d) information on probation service staffing and caseloads.(3) The Lord Chancellor must lay a copy of the report before Parliament.(4) The Lord Chancellor must publish the report once a copy has been so laid.(5) If this section comes into force after the beginning of a financial year, the first report may relate to a period beginning with the day on which that section comes into force and ending with the end of the next financial year.”Member’s explanatory statement This new clause would require the Lord Chancellor to publish an annual report on prison capacity, in line with the commitment in its Annual Statement on Prison Capacity: 2024 for a statutory annual statement. In line with the 2024 statement, it also requires the publication of information on probation service staffing and caseloads, given the importance of probation service capacity in managing offenders with community orders, suspended sentences and on licence.

My Lords, in moving my Amendment 88, I will also speak to the other amendments in this group. Before I do so, it is important for us to understand why the various proposers have thought them necessary. In one way or another, most address a concern about the existing capacity within the MoJ and the very big concern that there will be insufficient capacity to deal with the new responsibilities arising from the Bill.

Most, but not all, of the amendments focus on staffing in the Prison Service and the Probation Service. Damning concerns about staffing levels in those two services regularly appear in the annual reports of the prisons and probation inspectorates. In an earlier debate, I mentioned the concern about prison officer numbers and pointed out that, as the prison population has risen, the number of prison officers has declined. Prison officers are leaving at an alarming rate—17% each year—and half of them do so after less than one year in service.

On the Probation Service, Ministers themselves have acknowledged that they have inherited a service “under immense pressure”, and the Chief Inspector of Probation has referred to “chronic understaffing”. The Bill envisages more sanctioned early releases from prisons and an almost doubling of the number of people being tagged. That means more people to be supervised and therefore more work for probation officers. Currently, approximately 7,000 officers are doing this existing supervision work, and that number is considered inadequate. As one senior probation officer put it, when talking about things going wrong:

“It’s infuriating when some of us are being told it’s our fault we’re not doing enough and that we need to up our game, but actually the workload is sky high”.

I will give an example of why this really matters. Just one year ago, 73 out of every 100 released prisoners were recalled to prison. By June this year, the recall population had reached 13,538. That is the equivalent of nine prisons, costing £3.5 billion a year. Most are recalled not for new crimes but for failing to comply with their licence conditions. That is often because, frankly, they have no home or income, and they are supervised by an overworked probation officer. Preparation for release is minimal, and support afterwards is thinner still. The easy solution for these overworked probation officers, when facing licence breaches, is to get the offenders off their books and avoid any comeback if something goes wrong by taking the risk-averse route and simply sending them back to prison.

Finally, and very importantly, given the announcements yesterday on the removal of trial by jury in certain circumstances, Amendment 93 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames would require the Secretary of State to undertake and then publish an assessment of the potential merit of removing the cap on sitting days in Crown Courts in relation to sentencing hearings. My noble friend will talk about this amendment and why it is a better way forward than yesterday’s proposal to reduce trials by jury. I point out only that the need for some action is urgent. Crown Courts are facing a record backlog, with more than 78,000 cases waiting to be completed. Unless something is done, a suspect charged today can expect a trial in late 2029 or even early 2030. This is clearly unacceptable both for the suspect and for the victims, and of course some of those people are on remand in prison, increasing prison capacity.

The second category of amendments is about various requirements, capacity or delivery probability before enactment of the main measures in the Bill. My own probing Amendment 137 and associated amendments are perhaps the most obscure; ringing in my ears, as I was drafting it, was the probation officer who said that workloads are sky-high and other probation staff who have reported impossible case loads. It seems sensible to get some measure of an acceptable case load for each of the different roles of a probation officer and then set a maximum, which would of course focus minds on the number of staff needed.

However, I will be the first to admit that the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, have come up with something less complicated and, frankly, more encompassing. Their Amendment 134 proposes that, until the Chief Inspector of Probation is satisfied that there is sufficient capacity in the service to deliver those aspects of the Bill likely to increase demand, they cannot be implemented. My noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lord Marks will no doubt speak to Amendments 153 and 154, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, will speak to Amendment 155, but I just point out that all three require reports, before implementation, on the practicality of different aspects of the Bill.

It is clear that across your Lordships’ House there is, subject to caveats, general support for many of the measures in the Bill, but there is also wide-scale concern about the capacity of the MoJ to deliver them, especially within the Prison and Probation Service. The noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, for example, when discussing my amendment on including gambling disorder considerations within the criminal justice system when we were last discussing the Bill, said:

“The onus, therefore, is on the Government to demonstrate that the noble Lord’s well-intentioned amendments can be accepted, if possible, and then implemented. We would like this to be the case, but only if possible”.—[Official Report, 1/12/25; col. 1643.]

That is the concern that many of us have.

The Minister has offered a separate session to demonstrate his confidence in delivery capacity once the Bill is enacted, and that of course is very welcome and we look forward to it. But if he is so confident, none of the amendments in this group should be of any concern to him, so I look forward to hearing what he has to say. However, in particular, I hope he will support my Amendment 88, since it merely requires the Government to stick to their promise to deliver a statutory annual capacity report. I beg to move.

My Lords—

Can the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, get up?

My apologies—I was waiting for a colleague to jump in. Late though it may be, it is very difficult to follow that outstanding contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Foster. It was exhilarating for me to listen to it.

My Amendment 134 is on probation capacity. It is crucial, bearing in mind that I raise this as a consequence of issues raised with me by the probation union Napo. The amendment seeks to give the Probation Service watchdog some teeth. Currently, only the people running local probation units can trigger special measures and what is called the prioritisation framework. This has given rise to accusations that they are marking their own homework. My amendment seeks to share that power with the Chief Inspector of Probation.

Prioritisation is an important safety valve to stop probation units from being swamped, but sometimes an outside perspective is needed to gauge this accurately and honestly, for obvious reasons. It is widely accepted that the Probation Service is under extreme pressure—there is no doubt at all about that—and this Bill will only add to those pressures. Officers are trained to assess risk, but they must be given the space and time to do that properly if we want to avoid reinforcing the risk-averse culture that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, mentioned. It is causing so much damage to the service—damage that we can do without.

I am sure that the Committee will join with me in paying tribute to the probation officer who, shamefully, was stabbed in Oxford last week while supervising an offender. I commend his bravery and fortitude. Thankfully, he was not critically injured. We wish him a complete and fully supported recovery. Beyond the immediate harm that was caused, this incident—the second such attack recently, as an officer was stabbed in Preston in August—underscores the increasing risk faced by probation officers and the crisis of prison violence spilling over into probation. Not surprisingly, staff morale and retention have collapsed, made worse by over a decade of real-terms pay cuts while case loads have soared to unimaginable levels, and worse is yet to come.

My Lords, I support Amendment 134, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on his very passionate speech.

This issue has come up several times, but it does need more emphasis. It is incredibly important. Although I very much support the intentions of the Sentencing Bill, we cannot avoid at least acknowledging the strain already placed on the Probation Service. If we are going to put new demands on the service, we must first be confident that it can meet them. The latest report from the National Audit Office makes it painfully clear that the service is struggling with staff shortages, rising workloads and unsatisfactory outcomes. Only 79% of target staffing levels for qualified probation officers have been met, leaving around 1,500 vacancies across England and Wales. Of the 12 regions, 10 are operating beyond full capacity, and almost half of local delivery units are now rated red or amber for performance.

In that context, asking His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation to confirm adequate capacity before we put pressure on it is a necessary safeguard. If we want the measures in the Bill to succeed, our Probation Service must be set up to succeed. This proposed new clause would ensure that—I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for his kind words about it; I am a complete passenger on this—and that is why I am pleased to second it.