Baroness Hamwee:

Moved by Baroness Hamwee

58A: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—“Availability of probation requirements and treatment requirementsThe Lord Chancellor shall lay a report before Parliament annually regarding—(a) the funding of activities and treatments for probation requirements, and(b) the availability of activities and treatments in each region of England and in Wales.”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment requires the Lord Chancellor to make an annual report to Parliament on the availability of activities and treatments for probation requirements.

My Lords, rehabilitative activities, activities designed to reduce reoffending—whatever we call them; I do not disagree with my noble friend that what we call them is important—and treatments are often provided by the third sector. A lot of what is provided is excellent, but it is not enough, and it is not consistent across the country. The third sector’s role was acknowledged by David Gauke in his review.

We hear success stories, for instance of a middle-aged woman whose alcoholism was treated after she had been convicted several times for relatively low-level offences. She ceased offending when the alcoholism was treated and was able to lead an ordered life. I think too of a young man who, time after time, failed to connect with his probation officers. Then he found one—or she found him—whom he trusted. That enabled him to take proper advantage of the support that was available. Those are two examples of people the Justice and Home Affairs Committee met before my noble friend joined it.

I know the Minister knows all this, and he knows much more than I do, but I tabled this Amendment because regional disparities are substantial and funding needs are acute. A friend of mine refers to some of these organisations as having something that is almost similar to an eating disorder—they simply do not have enough. That is not a very good way of putting it, but they are so hampered by lack of funding. It must be very difficult to work for one of these organisations, knowing that you can never do enough. I do not advocate that all services should be provided by the state, but it is a very sorry position that we are so reliant on voluntary charitable organisations, which are struggling to keep going—not always successfully.

As to Amendment 139B, my noble friend Lord Marks will say more about reporting on reoffending, giving comparative details between offenders who have completed community and custodial sentences. I would be surprised if that is not available to the MoJ now. Because one wants to see sentences that work and maintain the trust of the public in the operation of the justice system—we are becoming like a stuck record in mentioning the public’s trust—the more information in the public domain, the better.

I think Amendment 93A from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, is in a similar vein, though I do not come to the same conclusion about an automatic sunset of the Act. I beg to move.

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name in this group. The Committee will be delighted to know that I do not intend to go into detail on Amendment 86 as I think it is quite straightforward and others may wish to discuss it, including my noble friends on the front bench, but I do intend to elucidate on my Amendments 93A and 127.

The point of this group is transparency in the criminal justice system. The second of my amendments, Amendment 93A, is about the efficacy of reforms to community services. I tabled the amendment, which, incidentally—it goes without saying—is a probing amendment, because it is important to test, over a period of time, the efficacy of the quite substantial and radical policy changes that these clauses give rise to. It is a probing amendment that challenges the Government to account for the success or otherwise of these proposals.

Make no mistake: this is about a risk and a potential impact on the quality of life of persistent offenders—people convicted of assault, burglary and other very serious crimes. I know that my erstwhile sparring partner, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, does not like the term “roaming the streets” when we describe persistent offenders who are not going to be incarcerated in the prison estate. I do not know whether there is a more cuddly term that she would like to use as an alternative, but it seems to me that we should not sugar-coat the real-world impact of people who hitherto would have been incarcerated in custody and now will not be. That is important to keep in mind.

Ministers need to take into account the level of risk and the costs, both financial and in terms of the quality of life and the residential amenity of many ordinary citizens who will potentially have cause to come across some of these individuals in the course of everyday life. It is absolutely right that Parliament has a right and duty to be made aware of the real-world practical impact of this unprecedented liberalisation of the criminal justice system that we envisage when the Bill reaches Royal Assent.

I also think it reasonable to allow a period of two years to elapse before judging the overall evidence of the efficacy of these changes, particularly as they relate to community orders and suspended sentence orders. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to it as a Sunset clause. I am not sure that it is quite a sunset Clause in the traditional sense, but it is reasonable and appropriate for us to measure the effect of these changes and whether the Minister and the Government are as good as their word in reducing recidivism by 10%. If not, Parliament and Ministers will have the responsibility and duty thereafter to review the policy in the light of the evidence and take appropriate action. I think a fair-minded person would concur with that. Others may wish to comment on Amendment 93A, but I believe it is sensible to put this provision in the Bill because it is evidence based, and I know the Minister believes in evidence-led policy.

Without further ado, I move to a potentially more intractable issue. The Committee may know that I raised the issue of the openness and transparency of the Parole Board, which is enunciated in my Amendment 127 in this group, during debates last year on the Victims and Prisoners Bill. I moved the amendment to that Bill both in Committee and on Report. Amendment 127 seeks to establish the presumption that Parole Board hearings are open to the public—with exceptions, of course. It seeks more generally to improve public faith and trust in the criminal justice system.

It is both a probing and a permissive amendment, and a natural progression from and consolidation of the reforms undertaken by Ministers in the previous Government over the past seven years, arising from the public disquiet over the proposed release of serial rapist John Worboys in 2018. That resulted in a review of the parole system and a public consultation, published in 2022, as well as a finding in the High Court in March 2018 that the Parole Board’s Rule 25—a blanket ban on transparency and details of the board’s deliberations—was unlawful.

The Government then rightly moved to address the very serious failings identified by the Worboys case by allowing summaries of Parole Board decisions to be provided to victims and other interested parties and allowing a reconsideration mechanism, introduced in 2019. That allows a prisoner and/or the Secretary of State for Justice within 21 days to seek reconsideration of certain decisions taken by the board. Victims are now also permitted to seek a judicial review on the grounds that decisions were procedurally unfair or irrational. Most significantly, the Parole Board’s Rule 15 was amended by secondary legislation in 2022 to enable public hearings to be facilitated, upon request to the chair of the Parole Board, in the “interests of justice”—a test utilised previously by the mental health tribunal.

My amendment is nuanced and heavily caveated in subsections (5) and (7) of my proposed new clause. It presumes no absolute right to open Parole Board hearings on the most serious cases, but it nevertheless presents a balance between the interests of the victim, prisoners and the wider criminal justice system. Importantly, it would impose a statutory duty on Ministers to take note of the importance of rehabilitation, reducing recidivism and promoting fairness and due process.

I accept that the Parole Board discharges a quasi-judicial function, but secret justice is not justice as most reasonable people would regard it. Open and transparent judicial proceedings are one of the few fundamental principles in the court system of England and Wales. Furthermore, other jurisdictions across the world, such as those in Canada and the United States, have a more open and transparent hearings regime, especially regarding the rights of victims to attend and participate in such meetings.

I was not entirely convinced, I have to confess, by the previous Minister’s comments in Committee last year that the changes made in the 2022 regulations definitively precluded all but a few hearings from being held in public. My amendment specifically addresses concerns about sensitive evidence and the concerns of the victims. It would permit such matters to be raised as a rationale for proceedings to be held in camera. I make the point that, under these measures, not every one of the 8,000-plus parole cases would be held in public; that is not the aim of the amendment, the permissive nature of which means that there is an expectation that the powers will be only lightly exercised in a minority of cases by the Secretary of State, with checks and balances in place to protect the operational independence of the Parole Board and a requirement to publish a review of the efficacy of the policy as it affects the “interests of justice” test, as well as public confidence in, and support of, the criminal justice system.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister as he addresses these issues and explains why it is not possible to go further in the programme of reforms undertaken over the previous few years by allowing public hearings to become the default position. I thank him in anticipation of his engaging on this issue. On that basis, I ask him to look favourably on this amendment, because I think that the time for reform has arrived.

My Lords, I support the Amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough in general terms. In particular, I believe that we must assess the effectiveness of measures introduced—and, if they are not effective, we need to go back to the drawing board.

I also wish to speak to my Amendment 93B, which seeks to ensure participation by prison inmates in education and training or “other purposeful activity”. That was not my original description, although I find that the awful word “purposeful” was first used in 1598—but it also had a secondary meaning of “determined” or “resolute”, which makes me feel a lot better.

I have tabled this amendment because I am concerned about the state of education in prisons, both now and going forward. My wording is far from perfect, since to keep it in scope of this narrow Bill, it can apply only to custodial sentences from the day on which the Bill comes into force as an Act, whereas the problem is endemic across the prison estate. The amendment would provide for an annual review of progress, and the implementing regulations bringing it in would be subject to affirmative resolution, to make the amendment more palatable to the Minister and his officials.

As a fellow former retailer, I admire the Minister, his distinguished father and Timpson the company, the repair chain that they run, and their brilliant work on rehabilitation of offenders. However, I was sorry to hear that their workshop in Wandsworth Prison has not reopened. The truth is that the success of these and parallel efforts by other companies to get ex-convicts into long-term work requires offenders to be appropriately trained while inside.

The Government are hoping that the measures they are taking to free up prisons, some of which are hard for people to stomach, will provide more time and resource to supervise education, skills training and purposeful activity. However, on 15 October, Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, wrote a blog about the problems in adult prisons. He had been contacted by despairing governors and heads of education about the cuts in provision they are facing under new prison education contracts. The Prison Service has told him there will be an average reduction of some 25% of provision, but some prison leaders say they are losing as much as 60%. As he refers to, there are powerful reasons why we should

“ensure that an inmate does not spend day after day in blank inactivity”.

Why is there so little acknowledgement of the role of reduced reoffending as part of our goal of shrinking the prison population?

As few as 31% of prisoners are still employed six months after leaving prison. This is not surprising when 20 out of 38 prisons inspected in the last reporting year were rated poor or not sufficiently good for purposeful activity. It takes weeks to get prisoners into work and attendance at training courses is often shockingly low. The working day is short, often as little as five hours, particularly on Fridays, yet prisoners need to get into the job habit for their future success.

Another problem is the low literacy levels of many prisoners and, I suspect, poor English in many cases. We had a similar challenge at Tesco and, with the support of the trade unions, we arranged education that helped to keep employees in the firm, grateful for the lessons and the extra opportunities they opened up. With the widening of employment rights, it becomes even more important to use the many months that many spend in prison for remedial education and skills training, so that employers can take them on with confidence, without the fear of a long drawn-out industrial tribunal if they do not perform.

I know only too well that prisoners differ. There are career criminals who are very clever, entrepreneurial and risk-taking. They might have been captains of industry with a different background or ethical compass. They need something different and to be kept separate, but they need to be fully occupied so that they are not continuing their evil operations from inside prison. From time to time, some go straight, especially if they are inspired to change—for example, by taking a degree.

As the average sentence of those actually in prison becomes longer, the need for opportunities and for better education of the prison population becomes ever greater. Incentive schemes, early release and management of privileges are important. I hope that the Minister, in replying, will explain how the new sentencing Laws can help with prison education by improving the incentive structure.

However, I believe that a more radical approach may be needed and that we should oblige prisoners who are still subject to custodial sentences to enter education, training, et cetera, as part of the prison regime, as is done in the military. Just providing adequate access to education, although important, is not enough. I have seen the failure of voluntary training in the Civil Service: the good and hard-working opt for the training and improve; those who really need it do not.

So I am looking for mandatory education or training for those who remain in prison after the Government’s reforms, all of whom will, in practice, be sentenced to 18 months or more. They will be serious criminals and badly in need of focused rehabilitation. That is why, to pick up a theme from discussion on day one, which I was sadly absent for, we cannot have a voluntary regime in prisons.

Our jails cost a fortune, and prisoners are bored, demotivated and wasting time as they serve their years. Education and the acquisition of skills, or helping out in the kitchens and gardens, can be transformational.

I agree with almost everything my noble friend has said. I have been on a prisons monitoring board, so I am very familiar with the inside of prison. But it troubles me that, if there is a requirement that the prisoner, as part of his sentence, does A or B, but the prison does not provide the facility, is the prisoner not then in breach of the sentence and is that not going to be a problem when he seeks to get release or goes to a parole board?

I thank my noble friend for that question; it is a good one. However, in my Amendment we are talking about future sentences, not existing ones, and we need to find a way of encouraging a radical change in prisons. This is Committee and this is a probing amendment. However, we do need to look at making an element of requirement for these long servers, or it just does not happen. I speak with my experience of the public sector and what happens if there are no requirements. I look forward to hearing how the Minister plans to take this agenda forward in the new world, and I hope that he will agree that a suitable amendment to the Bill could be extremely worthwhile.

My Lords, this group of amendments covers a range of different issues, all under the heading of accountability and transparency. I say, generally, that we must concede that the public, for good reason, are pretty cynical about prison policy at the moment and are suspicious of changes in sentencing. There are all sorts of controversies that have arisen around both of those things. Many of us spoke to these issues at Second Reading. For the Bill to not simply become part of that cynicism, we need to ensure that the decisions made in relation to this legislation are as open to public scrutiny as possible.

In that spirit, I particularly support Amendment 93A from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, which calls for a report on the efficacy of reforms in relation to community sentences and suspended prison sentences. In some of the discussions we have had, it is as though we are saying that, if we increase the number of suspended sentences and community sentences, reoffending rates will simply go down, because people will be in the community and there will be rehabilitation everywhere. Somehow, prison is intrinsically blamed for making people in prison absolutely guaranteed to carry on offending when they leave prison. That is one description we heard from a number of noble Lords at Second Reading.

My concern is that we might fool ourselves sometimes about a rehabilitative utopia in the community. I used an analogy at Second Reading about mental health care. Of course, if you posit the situation of locking people up in psychiatric hospitals and then say, “How will they possibly get well?”, and that we should have much more community provision, I will often agree. The problem is that, if you release people from those hospitals into the community without provision, it is a disaster for everybody: both for innocent victims, in some instances, and for patients.

My worry is that the worthy aims associated with the Bill will not be able to be delivered because of a lack of resources in the community. I am also concerned that, despite the undoubtedly honourable, genuine and sincere intentions of the Minister in this House, the arguments used to justify this piece of legislation elsewhere by the rest of the Government have been much more pragmatic and utilitarian. Effectively, they are saying, “We have to review sentencing and do all these things because our jails are too full”. That is not the same as a principled commitment to improving things. So, at the very least, we owe it to the British public to check what happens once this Bill comes into action. Whether it delivers—its efficacy—is incredibly important because, if it does not work, people in the community will suffer. So Amendment 93A is crucial.

I absolutely support the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, in her Amendment 93B. One of the reasons why we say prison does not work and people argue there is a problem with it is precisely that the purposeful activity—or just using prison in a way that could be constructive and giving prisoners access to training, work, education and so on, while being a punishment—is just not being delivered at the moment. You can say that it is happening, but it is not.

The Minister knows that I am involved in a project called Debating Matters Beyond Bars, which runs debating competitions in prisons. The prisoners involved in these often say, “It’s really good to have the opportunity to have a bit of pugilism that is intellectual rather than fisticuffs”. Having something to think about, talk about, debate and discuss is education, too. But it is absolutely excruciating trying to get those kinds of projects off the ground in prisons, because there just are not the resources. The number of prisoners I have met over the years who have been enthusiastic about doing some kind of education or training but were unable to access it simply fuels this notion that prisons are not working and have become seething morasses of frustration. That cannot be good for anyone. So I would like to make this mandatory as well. It would be quite difficult, because that is not entirely to do with accountability—except that, if we could see accountability and transparency in what is happening with education and training in prison, it would inform the broader debate rather than just being mentioned.

Finally, I am absolutely not sure about Amendment 127 from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, which would enable public scrutiny of Parole Board proceedings. I watched every episode of the BBC series on parole—they were fascinating insights—and I think that parole hearings, the boards and what happens in relation to parole are crucial and key. The noble Lord has included reference to objections from victims, families and legal representatives, but my concern is about the notion that everything should always be open. I have argued for political transparency and accountability, which is fine, but the Parole Board does things that might require discretion and some privacy. For example, it has been drawn to my attention that members of staff might want to say off the record that the Parole Board should not let a prisoner out. I do not necessarily want that being made widely available. So it is more complicated than just saying, “Open up the Parole Board”. Those are my reservations.

The whole parole system requires careful scrutiny. The frustrations of prisoners, their families and victims often centre on what happens at parole hearings. Noble Lords will know about IPP prisoners, whose whole fate rests on what happens at Parole Board hearings. I understand people’s frustrations about feeling that they are not given a fair hearing and not being able to make public what happens, but it is not a black and white issue and I am therefore uncertain about that amendment.

My Lords, at the beginning of this second day in Committee, in which we have covered Amendments 51 and 52 and now this one, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said that we can talk about doing all of this but it will all depend on whether there are resources to deliver real change.

In Yorkshire, I went to visit a pig farmer. He was very successful and the chair of governors of the local comprehensive school, where Ofsted was making a lot of demands, particularly about the testing of children. Everybody was into testing and examination, but the resources to deliver what was required were lacking. He said to me, “Come, and I will show you my pigs”. So we went to the farm and saw the pigs. He said, “Do you see them? Those are going to be sold in about six weeks’ time. What matters is not that every day I weigh the pigs to see whether they have arrived at the right weight. To fatten the pigs is not constantly to weigh them but to feed them”. That is what actually fattened the pigs, not the constant weighing. Transparency is important, but let us be very careful that we do not overburden the Probation Service by throwing at it a lot of things it needs to do and that we need to know whether it is doing them. What that did to the teachers, at the beginning of Ofsted, was to make them scapegoats to be blamed for a lack of proper resources and lack of constant training of teachers to be better teachers.

I hope that the Secretary of State will not be given so many burdens in things he has to produce before Parliament every year that our eye is taken off how we turn our Prison Service into a place where people really are rehabilitated, where those who want to learn are taught, and where reoffending begins to drop. We have to pay attention to that. I know that accountability and transparency are interesting, but we can become so obsessed that, in the end, people are given more and more burdens and take their eye off the job they are supposed to be doing. I urge a bit of caution, particularly about the Parole Board and what we mean by accountability and how we are going to get there.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that certain things need not all hang out. There are certain things which require confidentiality, and, if we are not careful, we will begin to distrust the entire criminal justice system, because the public will feel unsafe and feel that more should be put in. We are all very keen on it, but how much volunteering time have we ourselves given to helping prisoners and the Prison Service, so that they begin to deliver better?

My Lords, I will address briefly Amendment 58A in the name of my noble friend Lady Hamwee and my name. The amendment addresses the need for a report on the availability of activities and treatments for probation requirements. It goes hand in hand with Amendment 139B, in my name, which proposes reporting the levels of reoffending by offenders who have completed both custodial and community sentences.

I preface what I have to say by mentioning the urgent requirement, which we all accept, to increase the number and effectiveness of rehabilitation activities, and the effectiveness of custodial sentences, in reducing reoffending. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, was right to remind us of the points pressed by my noble friend Lord Foster—namely, that the success of the Bill depends on a full resourcing of the Probation Service. There long has been, and continues to be, a shortage of resources. I say again what I have said at Second Reading and elsewhere: resources spent on the Probation Service would, first, reduce our prison population and the expense of prisons—that is a move that the Bill encourages—and, secondly, hold out the hope of increasing the financial and social benefits of reducing reoffending.

Last Wednesday—I was not in the Chamber then, but I read his speeches—the Minister described the demoralisation of the Probation Service under the previous Government and the shambles of the aborted reorganisation plan. That had a serious effect on the morale and effectiveness of the Probation Service. We need more innovation and opportunity for rehabilitation in the Probation Service, both for offenders undertaking rehabilitative activities and for probation officers to have the opportunity to deliver what they are trained to do—namely, more rehabilitative activity.

This Government’s policy in the Bill is all about reducing reoffending, and fundamental to that is having adequate reports on rehabilitation activities and on the success of the struggle to reduce reoffending. We must keep a handle on progress on both fronts: offenders who serve in custody and those who serve community sentences; only in that way can we monitor and foster improvements. In that context, part of the rationale for the conclusions of David Gauke’s sentencing review and of this Bill—to move towards a reliance on community orders and on the Probation Service, rather than on custodial sentences, particularly short custodial sentences—has been to foster those ends. It is right that the success of that shift in emphasis should be monitored and considered, with practice adjusted if and as necessary. For that, we need data and information, which would be available from the reports suggested. Failing that information and consideration, significant aspects of the reforms would risk failure without our being able to tell where they are failing.

I agree with what my noble friend Lady Hamwee said about a potential Sunset clause. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, objected to the use of that term, but that is what he proposes, even if it is a conditional sunset Clause. He suggested that there should be a 10% reduction in reoffending, otherwise the significant aspects of these reforms would be withdrawn. That is not a helpful approach. What if we get, for example, an 8% reduction? That would be a success, even though it would be more limited than the one for which we hope.

Amendment 86, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, which suggests universal ethnicity and nationality reporting, carries significant dangers. I am not suggesting that ethnicity, where it is relevant, should not be recorded. The grooming scandals have taught us the importance of not fighting shy of noting ethnicity. But the breadth of Amendment 86, which covers, in effect, all offences and would require that all offences be not just monitored but publicly reported—that is, the recorded data to be published and laid before Parliament—is significantly dangerous. It could encourage populism. On that, I am afraid I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who has supported that conditional sunset clause.

My Lords, I appreciate that anything to discourage populism is a popular call in this House for some people. I just ask the noble Lord what the danger is apart from encouraging populism. When I put my name to that Amendment, even though I did not speak on it in the end, some of the controversies around sentencing, crime, law and order, prison, and so on have been a failure to provide information. The noble Lord mentioned the grooming gangs, but the more information there is, the better. What is there to be frightened of? One does not have to draw the conclusion that any negative things will come from having more information. As these kinds of details have been hidden for so long, having them made available for the British public so that they can make their own decisions is something we should trust the British public with. The noble Lord is keen that we trust probation officers. I am keen that we also trust the public.

My Lords, I too am keen that we should, generally speaking, trust the public. But Amendment 86 requires

“all offenders convicted and sentenced in the Crown Court or Magistrates’ courts” to have their

“country of birth … nationality … ethnicity … immigration status, and … the offence(s) for which they were sentenced” recorded, published and laid before Parliament. That could encourage the drawing of entirely the wrong conclusions by the British public.

I seem to recollect that the noble Lord’s party supported, for instance, the Lammy Review, which looked at sentencing and led, by a circuitous route, to the decision of the Sentencing Council to fall out somewhat spectacularly with the former Lord Chancellor. His party has also supported the use of quite detailed empirical data around stop and search, which is looked at through the prism of race and ethnicity. What is so different? Is there a particular kind of empirical data that he does not think that the public should be made aware of, or is he just saying that this a poor Amendment for the sake of it? It seems to me that the rationale is that you collect as much data as possible, you have an evidence-led approach to the policy and then you can design the legislation in the appropriate way.

I entirely agree with the noble Lord and the noble Baroness about the collection of data. What I am concerned about is the mandatory publication of all data, which risks being misused.

The noble Lord is quite right to suggest that my party supported Lammy. Indeed, I spent some time in this Chamber in debates on the sentencing guidelines Bill reminding the House of the Lammy Review on the inequality of outcomes based on ethnicity. That is quite different from saying that every single offence needs to be reported on and published, which can lead to unfortunate reporting.

Turning to Amendment 93B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, like the noble Viscount, Lord Hogg, not only did I agree with almost every word she said, but I agreed with it profoundly in the sense of the benefits of participation in education, training and purposeful activity. I just have some concern about the use of the word “mandatory”.

In principle, all those things are sensible and beneficial for all the reasons that the noble Baroness gave. However, as we in this House know, many prisoners are struggling with addiction and mental health issues and some with problems of aging and illness. For those prisoners, the prospect of education, training, work and purposeful activity may be nugatory. I worry about too much use of “mandatory” in these contexts without consideration of all the effects. What is important, as it was in the last group when we considered probation, is flexibility and a personal approach so that offenders are dealt with having regard to their personal needs. That is an additional point to the one made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hogg, who talked about the availability of particular training opportunities—which were important as well.

On Amendment 127, I say yes to transparency of the Parole Board. Generally, the proceedings of the Parole Board should be public, should be heard and should be considered. Reporting of them is a good thing. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that there may be material that needs to be private. In these hearings, some discretion must be applied to enable the Parole Board to receive and take note of material that should not necessarily be made public. The hearing should make that decision. However, in general, the principle of transparency is one with which I and my party agree.

My Lords, I support Amendment 86, in the names of my noble friend Lord Jackson and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and will respond briefly to some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, just made in opposing that amendment.

It might be relevant here to consider the interim guidance published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council on 13 August, following consultation with the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service, to encourage police forces to disclose the ethnicity and nationality, although not the immigration status, of suspects charged in high-profile cases. That interim guidance is currently the subject of a consultation being carried out by the College of Policing, which is trying to decide whether to make the guidance permanent or to withdraw it. The Runnymede Trust and other charities have written an open letter to the Home Secretary and the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council making many of the same arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, made, opposing the interim guidance that publishing the ethnicity and nationality of suspects in serious high-profile criminal cases is dangerous, that it can lead people to draw the wrong conclusions and that it can fuel the rise of populist parties and so forth.

However, the reason for the introduction of this interim guidance was the speculation and misinformation about the suspect in the Southport attacks in the summer of 2024. The object of advising the police to publish information about ethnicity and nationality of suspects in high-profile criminal cases is precisely to avoid people speculating in that way and drawing the wrong conclusion, giving them the information to fill the vacuum that would otherwise be filled by speculation. The same arguments can be made in favour of Amendment 86. If the courts—

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I invite him to clarify whether his objection to what I was saying is restricted to high-profile criminal cases, to which he has referred, or does he support the Amendment in so far as it covers every case in the Crown Court and every case in the magistrates’ courts?

I support the Amendment and do not think it is excessive to require the publication of this data in every case. Would the noble Lord approve Amendment 86 if it was amended, whereby it was just information about convictions in high profile cases that the amendment was asking to be published? Is the noble Lord’s objection just to the extent of the information required to be published, or does he object to any information being published?

The noble Lord sits down expecting a reply from me, and he will get one. It is that there is and ought to be a discretion about this sort of publication. To have a mandatory requirement for the recording of all information in every case—and it may be that it also goes to some high-profile cases—is to tie the hands of what is published in an unreasonable way. It may be that, in a lot of cases, publication is plainly in the public interest and should happen. I accept and agree that there should be the fullest possible recording, and then publication is a matter for the department.

The risk of requiring Crown Courts to publish information in only some cases, but not all cases, and to expect the Crown Courts to exercise discretion, is that it could lead to public suspicion that they are suppressing data for precisely the sorts of reasons that the noble Lord articulated earlier: that it might lead to the rise in support for populist parties.

If the concern is that the publication of data showing the number of serious offences committed by people according to country of birth, nationality, ethnicity or immigration status might fuel a rise in populism, then surely the cause would be the fact that a disproportionate number of criminal offences are being committed by members of certain groups, not the fact that that information is being published. The concealment of that information and the refusal to publish it, or the concealment of some of the information, would, I fear, lead to greater public suspicion, speculation and, indeed, misinformation.

The argument made by the chief constables is that the public need to know this information if we are to avoid the kind of speculation and misinformation that fuelled the disorder in the summer of 2024. The famous Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, said the best remedy for false and misleading speech is “not enforced silence” but more and better speech. Sunlight in these cases is the best disinfectant.

My Lords, I also support Amendment 93B in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.

It is well established that the literacy and numeracy rates for those who end up committing crime are much lower than those in the general population. A Ministry of Justice report into prison education found that 57% of adult prisoners taking initial assessments had literacy levels below those expected of an 11 year-old.

In his review, David Gauke explicitly references the use of purposeful activity in the Texan system and positive engagement with it as being linked to serving less time inside prison; yet under these reforms there is no such requirement. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has already referenced Charlie Taylor’s assessment of the current system. David Gauke also points out in his review just how much of a problem access to these services is in many of our prisons:

“His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ annual report for 2022-2023 found that standards of purposeful activity were rated poor or insufficiently good in all but one of the adult male prisons inspected”.

Despite the measures in the Bill, there will still be a growing prison population. This will make delivering these services even more challenging, but it has to be addressed. We need to make sure that people who are spending time in prison are spending it as constructively as they can. Focusing on this and prioritising resource to help reduce the chances of people reoffending is the best way of reducing crime over the longer term. I would argue accountability and mandatory requirements are what ultimately drive how we place resources.

My Lords, I was not intending to intervene at all in this group, but could I just try to inject an element of reality into Amendment 86A, which the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, proposes? It requires the courts service to record and retain, in respect of all offenders convicted and sentenced in the Crown Court and magistrates’ court, the details that have been referred to: country of birth, nationality, ethnicity, immigration status, and the offences themselves.

It is important to remind the Committee that, in the magistrates’ courts, hundreds of thousands of minor offences are dealt with every year. For example, there are hundreds of thousands of motoring offences such as speeding, careless driving, not having insurance and matters of that sort, as well as tens or hundreds of thousands of failures to pay a TV licence. The vast Majority of those cases do not trouble a court in the normal sense, in that there is no hearing in a court. They are dealt with under the single justice procedure. Almost all of them, save those that are contested, are dealt with, essentially, on the papers.

The information identified in the proposed amendment is not available at the moment, and it is difficult to see how it might be made available. I cannot, for the moment, think of a way that it could be done without exponentially increasing the burden on the system generally and imposing huge burdens on those who have been prosecuted for speeding or not having a TV licence, and so forth. Unless there were compulsion of some sort for this information to be given, nothing could sensibly happen. I do not seek to express a view on the merits of collecting such information, or at least parts of it, for some cases; that already happens, as in the Crown Court, to some extent. However, the breadth of this amendment travels into the area of unreality, I regret to say.

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have tabled amendments and spoken on the topic of transparency. It is an important aspect of the criminal justice system that it is accountable and instils trust in the public, who rely on it.

Beginning with Amendment 58A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, we on these Benches broadly support the aim of this measure. Knowing the affordability and accessibility of treatments and activities is an important part of ensuring that the probation system is working. Such matters are vital to persons on probation, and they can make a real contribution to those who complete their probation periods. Regional inequalities should be known and addressed, so that all who are subject to such orders have the same means with which to complete their sentence. That may be an ideal, but it is what we should be aiming for.

I offer support from these Benches for the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. There may indeed be real practical issues and objections, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, has reminded us of, with all his experience. He is right to draw our attention to the practical difficulties in identifying and recording ethnicity and other information—that may well be for another day. That is a fundamental objection; none the less, we would argue that the Government should certainly be looking at what information can be sensibly obtained in this area.

I was somewhat surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Marks, say “yes” to the collection of data in principle but “no” to its publication. That is what I think he said. Who will see it, then? Just civil servants and Ministers? Not Members of Parliament? Not Members of this House? If collected, it will certainly leak. Maybe I misunderstood him.

I think the noble Lord did misunderstand me. I did not oppose publication in any broad way; I simply said it was a matter of discretion as to what should be published and what should be kept private. The issue of universal publication is the danger that I expressed. It is a matter of discretion, relevance and importance, and those are decisions to be taken by those who collect the information.

I think there are problems with that as to how the discretion would be exercised and who would set what rules. I will not spend any longer on this, but I suggest that my noble friend Lord Young of Acton was right when he drew attention to the interim guidance supported by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. We really have to think about this. We need information—we need some sunlight—and if we do not have accurate information, the wrong information will be put out there, will be used by populists and will be dangerous.

We need accurate information. If it is limited to serious and Crown Court cases, that would at least be an important start. We do not need to know the ethnicity of every driving offender—that is clearly unnecessary—but why not for offences of violence and everything else in the Crown Court? If it can be done, let us just look at it.

My Lords, forgive me for interrupting the noble Lord. I am grateful to him for giving way. Why do we need to know anyone’s ethnicity? Why is that relevant at the stage that we are talking about? I am afraid I just do not get this argument. Why is ethnicity relevant and to whom is it relevant?

It is only one of the factors included. I did not mean to select just that. I was using it as shorthand for what is in my noble friend Lord Jackson’s Amendment, which includes country of birth—which I suggest is relevant—and nationality.

I beg the indulgence of the Committee to specifically answer the reasonable point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. There is and has been for many years significant concern about the overpolicing of some communities. That has given rise to a number of key initiatives, including the police action plan, which the noble Lord with his great expertise is well aware of. That is based on the collection and collation of data around ethnicity. You cannot have one without the other, I am afraid.

Therefore, to keep the faith and trust that taxpayers have in the criminal justice system, one has to collect as much data as possible. If one collects it to prevent overpolicing, one should also collect it for other reasons, so that you have a clear, transparent system.

There is quite a lot to cover in this group. My noble friend has made the point. We never suffer from having too much information. If it is collected in bits and pieces, there is the danger of distortion.

The report by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, exposed a decade-long data collapse and made it clear that this should not carry on any longer. This is an area in which we have dragged our feet for too long. The Majority of OECD countries have mandatory reporting statutes. The fact is that the United Kingdom does not do the same, and that is no help to anyone other than the offenders.

We need to do something to implement the recommendations from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. The Amendment would give forces the necessary data to record, analyse and respond to different dynamics in different communities. Publishing data would prove to the public that the Government are not concerned with accusations of bigotry but focused on outcomes. These are clear benefits in this amendment for noble Lords’ efforts to tackle crime and reduce reoffending. I hope the Minister has considered it carefully.

Perhaps the most important of my noble friend’s amendments is Amendment 93A. It is similar to Amendment 139B in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, which would require the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on the levels of reoffending. I think everyone agrees that these statistics are important. Reoffending rates are important in their own right, but far more important is the effect of policy on those rates and of those rates on policy; it is a virtuous circle.

My noble friend’s amendment sets this aim out in practice. The Government intend to ease the pressure on our prisons by increasing the efficiency of the criminal justice system. This is a fine goal, but the proof will be in the product. There is little use legislating if we do not look to see whether it has worked, and the only way we will know whether it has worked is if we have the data to see what has actually happened. The Government’s measures must be seen to have tangibly decreased the rate of offending and certainly, I hope, not to have led to an increase. Only then can we consider them effective.

My noble friend’s amendment would ensure that the Government are held to account, by themselves and by the public. It would do so by legislating that if their measures do not have the desired impact, and if reoffending rates are not reduced by at least 10%, the relevant sections of the Act will cease to have effect. This amendment seeks to hold the Government to account. The Lord Chancellor likes to speak up his achievements; why should he not lay out the effects and let the public decide for themselves whether they have worked? This is a sensible amendment. It would allow the Government to prove that they are achieving what they say they are. I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to agree.

My noble friend’s amendment would also require the Government to lay out the data on reoffending for those on community and suspended sentence orders. Many noble Lords spoke against the list of offenders being exempt from Clause 1 that we proposed on the first day in Committee. Most notably, it was argued that repeat offenders are unlikely to fall under the presumption provided for by the Bill. The publication of data under this amendment would ensure that this is in fact the case; if it is not, the public are entitled to know that.

I also speak in favour of Amendment 93B tabled by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. As she has set out, it aims to introduce mandatory participation in education, training, unpaid work or other purposeful—I emphasise “purposeful”—activities as a condition of a custodial sentence. Too many defendants, and thereafter convicted persons, are functionally illiterate; I think the figure in prisons is 25% to 30%. This is certainly a factor that contributes to being in unemployment and subsequent offending. Important points were made on the same lines by my noble friend Lady Porter. I hope the Government are listening to them.

The modern prison system is predicated, for a large part, on rehabilitation. This implies leaving prison with an improved outlook and a developed set of competencies, compared with those with which the prisoner entered prison. Current prisoners are organised, at least in theory, around this end. Schemes, courses and work are often available to guide prisoners into productive work while they are inside and to prepare them for when they leave, but this is not mandatory. They are not offered out of obligation; rather, offers are based on capacity and funding. Indeed, they are often reliant on funding. This creates a very unequal and disorderly system in which some inmates are rehabilitated and some are not. That is usually the result of factors out of their control. There is no point creating a system intended to rehabilitate if the system does not, in fact, provide the means to deliver that.

Each individual prisoner costs the taxpayer £54,000 a year for accommodation and upkeep—and, of course, to keep them inside. This means that the law-abiding public are, in essence, paying more than double the minimum wage to house individuals who have broken the law; that is too much to be spending on a system that works for some but does not for many. This group aims to increase the transparency of the criminal justice system. Transparency is good for several reasons: it ensures accountability, which in turn ensures the efficient running of the system; and, perhaps most importantly, it serves to uphold the public’s trust in the system.

We face a crisis of trust in our criminal justice system. The last YouGov poll taken on public confidence in the British judicial system saw, for the first time since the poll began, that as many people did not have confidence in the system as did. The British public do not believe that the system they pay for is producing the right outcomes. We have to acknowledge that. The public must be able to see that the criminal justice system works for their benefit. This involves, I am afraid, locking up many offenders, but it also involves ensuring that they make good use of their time. If criminals are mandated to engage, while in prison, in activities that benefit society when they come out—and these activities are documented and recorded, as my noble friend’s amendment aims to introduce—we could begin to instil trust in the system as a whole. It will be a stepping stone because it will be seen to be doing some good for those who are locked up.

This is the case for this entire group of amendments. The poll that I cited demonstrates that we must do more, even if the changes are small and incremental. The public should know who are committing the crimes, whether they are being adequately dealt with and whether the measures the authorities use are working. These are the aims of my noble friend’s amendments, and we on these Benches support them.

My Lords, I thank noble Lords and noble Baronesses for the opportunity to discuss these important amendments as part of a fascinating debate; they have certainly covered a lot of ground. Transparency in the criminal justice system is vital. We must strike a balance between promoting understanding and accountability without compromising the integrity of our public services or creating unnecessary burdens for those working in them.

I turn first to Amendment 58A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but, before I begin, I must acknowledge noble Lords’ important questions on funding for the Probation Service—a crucial part of delivering the reforms in this Bill. As noble Lords know, we are investing up to £700 million in the final year of the spending review, which is an increase of 45%. As I said at Second Reading, although detailed allocations are yet to be finalised, my priorities are clear: more people in post; digital investment that saves time; and tools for probation to use. These will all make the jobs of our hard-working probation staff more manageable and rewarding. I repeat my offer to noble Lords to arrange a session in the coming weeks to take them through this in more detail.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for raising important points regarding the availability of activities and treatments for probation requirements. I assure the noble Baroness and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, that we are enabling probation practitioners to use their professional expertise to ensure that rehabilitation is tailored to what works. To do this, we will have guidance and training in place to ensure that they are clear on how decisions should be made and how to deliver them. This includes what interventions are needed and when to refer an offender to a specialist support service; so, if an offender whose offending is driven by addiction is sentenced to a probation requirement, their probation officer will be pointed to the right interventions to address any factors that could lead to that behaviour.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Porter, Lady Fox and Lady Hamwee, rightly mentioned the availability of treatments. It is critical that offenders have access to the right activities and treatments to support their rehabilitation. That is why the Ministry of Justice works closely with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that all offenders who need it have access to high-quality mental health, alcohol and drug treatment. DHSC has made a targeted investment to support those referred by the criminal justice system, including funding 575 drug and alcohol workers with criminal justice specialisms. They work closely with prisons and probation services and in courts, as well as with the police, to improve access to, and the quality of, treatment.

Our ongoing partnership with NHS England has achieved an increase in the number of mental health treatment requirements. The number sentenced now is more than five times higher than it was a decade ago: it is up from 960 in 2014 to 4,880 in 2024. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, knows that I am always available to speak to the House about how we are ensuring that these treatments are accessible and funded. Given that, I hope that she agrees with me that a statutory requirement to publish an annual report is unnecessary.

Amendment 139B would require the Secretary of State to lay an annual report before Parliament on levels of reoffending by offenders who have completed a community or custodial sentence. Reducing levels of reoffending to cut crime and ensure fewer victims is at the very heart of both this Bill’s purpose and why I took this job. The evidence is clear, and we are following it. Offenders given a community order or suspended sentence order reoffend less than similar offenders given a short prison sentence. We are exploring how we can evaluate the impact of the Bill’s provisions on key outcomes, including levels of reoffending. In the meantime, I can confirm that we already publish on a quarterly basis data on levels of reoffending by disposal type, including custodial sentences, community orders and suspended sentence orders.

I hope that my answer assures the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, of our commitment to following the evidence, regarding his Amendment 93A. However, as I am sure he will appreciate, many factors go into whether someone reoffends, and creating artificial targets will not support hard-working front-line staff in trying to improve the system.

I thank the noble Lord for Amendment 127 but, although we share the aim of improving transparency in the parole system, the Government believe that this proposal is unnecessary. Public hearings were introduced in 2022, allowing any hearing to be held in public where the chair considers it in the interests of justice. This amendment would reverse the current position, making public hearings the default and requiring the Parole Board to seek the agreement of the Secretary of State to hear a case in private. This would undermine the board’s quasi-judicial independence and create significant administrative burdens. It would also require victims’ views about the prospect of a public hearing to be sought in every case. This risks retraumatising victims and burdening them with an additional and unnecessary decision about their case. There is no evidence that a demand for all hearings to be public exists, so the amendment would not offer any meaningful benefits over the current process. The board holds more than 8,000 oral hearings annually, yet its website reports just 55 decisions on applications for a public hearing since 2022.

On Amendment 86, this Government remain committed to improving the collection and publication of data on foreign national offenders. We are working closely with colleagues in the Home Office to enable the early identification of foreign national offenders, which will support earlier removals. This may require a new mechanism to verify the information provided. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, set out, this must be cost effective and must prevent placing additional pressure on operational staff; that is why we are exploring both operational and technological solutions. For this reason, we cannot accept a statutory duty to publish this information before the necessary infrastructure is in place to support it.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for her kind words and for raising the important issue of participation in rehabilitative activities such as work or training; I am pleased that we have had an opportunity to debate this today and to learn more about the history of “purposeful”. We fully share the ambition behind this amendment, which is to ensure that time in custody is used productively both to support rehabilitation and to reduce reoffending. Prison should not simply be where criminals stay between crimes. I want to make it clear that this Government are of course committed to improving regimes across the prison estate, but making participation a mandatory condition across every custodial sentence would be impractical and, in some cases, counterproductive. Prison regimes vary widely to meet the needs of different populations, and imposing a blanket statutory requirement risks creating obligations that cannot be met.

Courts can already signal programmes that could assist the offender in their sentencing remarks, which prison authorities can take into account when determining appropriate activities. Rehabilitation works best when it is voluntary and tailored to individual needs. Forcing participation could undermine genuine engagement and meaningful progress. It is therefore essential that prisons are able to plan each person’s rehabilitation according to their individual circumstances and needs.

That said, I assure the Committee that we are not standing still. In the last financial year, more than 50,000 prisoners participated in education courses. Although all noble Lords are aware that we are under pressure on delivering education, we have a slight increase in funding of 3%. One of my priorities is to make sure that we get our classrooms full. We also develop the work of purposeful activity and workshops. Across the prison estate, thousands of prisoners are engaged in work every day in our own prison industries, which build skills for working life.

As well as this, we are working to expand our partnerships with employers and businesses. We partner with external businesses, such as Greene King and Marston’s, where prisoners can start training and work in prison and then continue into employment when released. We already put out annual statistics on prison education. I am keen to consider how we can share more data on personal activity, but this will require further thought and development of the data sources.

I am sure that noble Lords will agree that it is much more difficult to rehabilitate prisoners if prisons are constantly running out of critical capacity. That is why the other reforms in the Bill, ensuring that there is space in prison for the most dangerous offenders, and our progression model are so important. For these reasons, although we wholeheartedly support the spirit of this amendment, we do not agree with mandating purposeful activity. I therefore urge that the amendment be withdrawn.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, referred to me as his erstwhile sparring partner; I am going to have to up my game.

Amendment 58A was intended as a mechanism to introduce the issues. I am sure that the Minister will understand that one has to find devices in order to introduce subjects, and one of those most often used is laying a report. I take his point about an annual report, but this measure was intended—to use his words—to be tailored to what works. I was particularly keen to stress the reliance on the third sector and the need for its services to be available; this is particularly relevant to women offenders, but not only them.

I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. This is an issue that is hard to leave alone. I noticed that, when the Minister was talking about the available treatments, he understandably referred to the Department of Health and Social Care. It is not only that, though. Let me take this moment—I am aware that we are spending a very long time on this group—to refer to the purposeful amendment, in every sense, of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I support it, but only so far; I hope that supporting it “so far” might give us something on which we can work after this stage in order to inject an element of reality.

In the report of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lord Foster—it is titled Better Prisons: Less Crime—I found it quite shocking to read of the difficulties and the failures to provide education and skills training, particularly when one thinks of the functional innumeracy and illiteracy mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Porter. Having to impose a mandatory requirement would be a great pity and would set up too many prisons and prison governors to fail.

This issue remains important, and it is very good that we have had this opportunity to discuss it. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 58A withdrawn.

Clause 13: Driving prohibition requirement