B

Baroness Hamwee (LD)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 1 December 2025

Debate

Sentencing Bill

Contribution

My Lords, I too am intrigued and concerned as to how these conditions will be monitored and enforced. I did not support the amendments that are aimed at the same question in the previous group, because I do not think we should make, for instance, the licensee of a pub or the operator of a sports ground the enforcer of conditions. Many of us have been critical enough, in the area of immigration, about making landlords and so on enforcers of government legislation. But I think there is still a lot to explore in this. I said that I assumed the answer was going to be electronic monitoring, but how is that to be done, unless we are requiring the offender to be confined to a particular place—to home, for instance? They are not as strict as that; they exclude certain events. So does somebody need to know where events—an Oasis concert, a Premier League match or a fringe theatre with a tiny capacity—are taking place? How is this actually checked? The Minister said that the probation officer will get the data from a tag. I do not know enough about how these work to know whether the probation officer can easily find out whether somebody has attended a Sheffield United match. How is that actually done in practice on a day-to-day basis? Does the probation officer have the GPS co-ordinates for everything that might be an issue? It would be helpful if we could understand more about this. I am concerned about live facial recognition—if it is being used; I do not know whether it will be. It works on the basis of a watch list, which is created for a particular occasion but then, as I understand it, will be deleted; it is not something which would go on for several months. I had thought that live facial recognition was only for the period of surveillance. I am asking for much more briefing on this, which we would then want to be in the public domain, but we need to understand it first. My noble friend Lord Marks will be speaking to our Amendment 106, but I cannot overemphasise the importance of this amendment, or something like it. The objective is reducing reoffending, so one must enable employment, education, rehabilitation programmes and so on. We know from the experience of other orders that, for instance, the requirement to report to a police station can be imposed with absolutely no regard to the demands on an individual, who is then forced to take a day off work. I am interested to hear how enforcement works with the support for the offender, which is implicit in the activities. My noble friend Lord Foster of Bath, in making the overarching point about necessity and proportionality, has hit on what is, to my mind, a very important point. I wish I had thought of it, but I support him in this. I beg to move Amendment 60.

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