Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)

My Lords, we agree with the Statement that the Government clearly inherited a crisis of prison spaces, and a crisis in our criminal justice system as a whole. Frankly, the crisis was clearly attributable to many years of neglect, principally under the last Government. The Sentencing Act was a timely response to that crisis of available prison space. It is unsurprising that, as events have developed, the implementation of the Sentencing Act has changed, and the response of the Government is acceptable in that regard. We are content to see that a great deal is being done for victims and victim support but concerned to know that public confidence in tagging and the other measures that are proposed to increase confidence and security among the public are matched by an increase in concern for the welfare of victims generally and the availability of services to those victims. The provision of probation services plays a considerable part in the Statement. Our concern is that the resources available from the welcome allocation of £700 million for probation services by the end of this Parliament will be insufficient given the increased demands of more prisoners released into the community, more tagging, more restrictions and more exclusions, which are designed to increase confidence and security among the public. What are the Government’s plans in the event that the resources for probation prove insufficient? How far are they able to say that there will be an increase in the £700 million allocation? I turn to prison building. There is in the Statement a pride taken in the fact that more prison spaces are to be made available. However, prison building is not the whole answer. We need to move to a more humane system that prioritises reduction in reoffending, reform and rehabilitation over simply providing more space. We have overcrowded and unhealthy prisons, many of which need replacement, but new prisons take a great deal of time to build. There are delays in planning, in getting planning permission, in design and in building new prisons. Can the Minister give us details of those delays in the prisons that have been recently opened? The Statement also talks about building more cells within existing prisons. That is well and good, but the problem may be that those new cells in existing prisons will put more pressure and more need for spaces on the rest of the facilities in those prisons. How far have the Government considered ways of mitigating that? Finally, on a more positive note, we very much welcome the commitment to legislation to end the complete scandal of IPP sentences before the end of this Parliament. It is monstrous that a sentence that was abolished in 2013 should still be keeping prisoners behind bars when those prisoners would have been released years ago had they been given sentences that fitted their crimes. I hear the concerns about security. Nevertheless, prisoners on determinate sentences are released into the community, and it is welcome to hear that the same is going to happen for IPP prisoners. We accept the invitation to work cross-party with the Government to work out how this can be achieved, but it would be interesting to hear from the Minister today the detail of how this is going to be achieved within the timescale and what measures that are not currently in place will be taken to that end.