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Lord Lemos (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 8 September 2026

Debate

Criminal Justice Reform

Contribution

I pay tribute to the noble Lord for the work he has done on this; we have discussed it many times. On his specific question, I think I have already indicated that, under the way we will be managing probation data, probation officers will know the whereabouts of offenders on tags in as close as possible to real time. At the moment, that is not the case. The key thing in relation to domestic abuse victims is, as I have said, that the way in which they feel safe, and are safe, is if the system—the Probation Service—knows where people are and what they are up to, and can keep victims safe from access by those people. The noble Lord knows that what we have rolled out in DAPOL—domestic abuse perpetrators on licence—has been very successful. We have introduced 2,000 of these and will roll them out across the country by the end of the year. With domestic abuse, it is one thing ensuring that justice is done and getting a trial and so on, but in my experience of talking to domestic abuse victims, the primary thing is that they want to feel safe, and they want their families and their children to feel safe. The way in which we can achieve that is, in large measure, in the short term, partly through the intensive community supervision provisions that we are making. I am out of time—I find it difficult to shut up on this subject—but may I make one final offer to your Lordships? Because we have had a number of questions about probation, I will arrange for an all-Peers presentation on the changes we are making, in particular the intensive supervision model, including in relation to domestic abuse. I want noble Lords to really feel they have understood those things, and then I will be happy to take any further questions.

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