Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 7 to 11. I support the amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Sandhurst and my noble and learned friend Lord Keen, particularly Amendments 6 and 18 to 29. I fully understand the need to address the issue of prison capacity and overcrowding. We are now in a position where we have 97.3% capacity and 86,800 prisoners, as at 3 November this year. I think we are all committed to tackling recidivism and to improving prisoner education and rehabilitation; I know the Minister has a personal commitment and an enviable record in that respect. I support the wider aim of delivering 14,000 additional prison places by 2031, given that, at present, we will be 9,500 places short by 2028. I am one of the few people who has actually read the Independent Sentencing Review by my erstwhile friend and former colleague David Gauke, which is an excellent piece of work. I notice that the Government are no longer propagating the disingenuous statistic and canard that the previous Government, who struggled with Covid, Ukraine and other contingent financial problems, created only 500 places. For the record, they created 8,500 places and opened three new prisons: HMP Five Wells, HMP Fosse Way and HMP Millsike. Unfortunately, due to the decrepit physical condition of the prison estate, presided over by both parties, the previous Government, cheered on by His Majesty’s Opposition at the time and prisoner advocacy charities, were compelled to take many prison places out of use. Some 4,151 cells have been closed due to dilapidation since 2010, according to the PAC report on prison capacity published in March this year. I have two major concerns regarding the proposals in Clause 1 that give rise to my amendments, which in practice would de facto abolish prison terms under 12 months. They send out a regrettable message to criminals and the wider public that, because of government incompetence, a failure to plan and a failure of imagination, committing crime is cost free. Shoplifters, burglars, thieves, fences, thugs and drug dealers will be spared jail and instead will receive a community sentence. Even someone given an 18-month sentence for a serious crime, with a credit of a guilty plea taken into account and a reduction to 12 months, will receive no custodial jail time at all. I shall focus on Amendment 7, concerning these rather wrongheaded proposals. The Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 was introduced by a Labour MP and supported by the Labour Front Bench and the GMB union, whose national officer said at the time: “It’s welcome to see arrests taking place but we also want to see an increase in prosecutions and tougher sentences handed down for these unacceptable assaults”. The Bill was supported by many senior Labour MPs, including, for instance, Louise Haigh, then a Front-Bencher, who said that the attitude “sadly exists across the criminal justice system, that being punched and kicked is somehow to be expected and accepted … we will never accept that people should be assaulted while they are doing their job and we will do everything in our power to protect them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/17; col. 1150.] Under these proposals we have a situation where around 3,000 thugs—who assaulted police officers, NHS workers, firefighters and ambulance staff, among others—will receive a golden ticket: a free pass. What message does that send to the public and to those public servants who do these very tough jobs? The criminal justice system is distrusted by many taxpayers already. Will that improve as a result of this legislation?