L

Lord Timpson (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 2 June 2025

Debate

Independent Sentencing Review

Contribution

I am learning how this business works, and when you go to the Treasury, you ask for what you want and then, in our case, we are happy with what we need to do the job. The £700 million is significant and will make a difference, but on top of that, we need to recruit more probation staff, which we are doing. We need to train them really well, and we are doing a review into training. We also need to support them, because the noble Lord is right: 39% of people reoffending is far too high and means more victims as well. One of the things I learned is that employment makes a huge difference to people when they leave prison. One of the things I tried to do was to interview people when they were in prison, so they started working for me the next day. When I started employment advisory boards, 14% of prisoners had a job after six months. With the work of so many local business leaders and the third sector, that figure is now well over 30%. Those people in a job are far less likely to reoffend.

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