Parliament's party history for this member: Labour ( – present).
Register of interests
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3. Gifts, UK sources
BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) Ltd - £900.00
Husband is a member of the Hospitality Sector Council, a forum to facilitate cooperation between the hospitality sector and Government. This is an unpaid role.
The Government inherited a justice system pushed to breaking point by the previous Government. When Labour came to power, we had fewer than 100 places left in our prisons, with incredibly serious problems with electronic monitoring. We have taken swift action to improve performance, and are now delivering the biggest expansion of tagging in British history, backed by £100 million of investment.
As part of our reforms, there is a presumption—<em>[</em><em>Interruption.</em><em>]</em>
Thank you, Mr Speaker. As part of our reforms, there is a presumption that eligible offenders released under the progression model will be tagged, giving the Probation Service an additional tool to monitor offenders and protect the public. We are now tagging a record number of offenders, helping to cut crime and make our streets safer.
Electronic monitoring is not used in isolation. Those released from prison remain subject to licence conditions and probation supervision, which can include curfews and restrictions on their movements. We have also introduced tougher powers for probation officers, including world-first restriction zones for the most serious sexual and violent offenders where appropriate, as well as the ability to prohibit offenders from driving, attending public events or entering pubs, clubs and bars. Where an offender breaches their conditions or can no longer be safely managed in the community, they can immediately be recalled to prison.
We have also ensured that the electronic monitoring service is ready to support the expansion. The service was ready for first-tranche releases on 1 October, with the equipment and staff in place to deliver the presumption to tag offenders on release. Serco has consistently met its contractual requirements since March 2026.
The Ministry of Justice routinely publishes extensive data on probation and tagging. It is published quarterly, and the last set of data was published just last week. It is vital that the Government and the public have confidence that the information published by the Department is accurate. Our quarterly economic monitoring statistics, including figures for the number of prison leavers fitted with tags and the figures covering the October period, will be publicly available in January.
This Government inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse, with just 500 places being built in the last 14 years. It is this Government who are now building the prison places we need and putting in the strictest measures possible to protect the public.
While the hon. Member raises some important points, I stress again that we are working night and day to fix the broken system that we inherited. We are working across agencies. We are working incredibly hard with the police, the Probation Service and all those who work in the criminal justice system who want to keep the public safe and ensure that victims get the service they need, too.
I caution the hon. Gentleman, because he appears to be conflating a number of issues. He will be aware that it is usual practice, which has been in place under <span id="179" class="column-number" data-column-number="179"></span>successive Governments, including his own, that prisoners are tagged at their place of accommodation on release, and that was always the plan for 1 October. That said, we know that this creates a gap between leaving prison and having the tag fitted, which is why to address it we have conducted a successful pilot to fit tags at prison receptions. That is currently live in six prisons, and we are working at pace to roll this out to further prisoners who will have a tag upon leaving. <em>[</em><em>Interruption.</em><em>]</em> The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) chunters from a sedentary position to ask about the police. He is talking about local Metropolitan police policy in relation to breaches of court bail where it is the responsible agency. It is important not to conflate the release of prisoners and the tagging policy, which we are working at pace to improve from the situation we inherited, with the other demands on the police, which we are working closely with them to resolve. We inherited a failing tagging system with record backlogs. We are investing £100 million in electronic monitoring, tagging offenders before release and, importantly, strengthening victim protections with a new alert system.
To the MPs who share this Government’s and the Prime Minister’s ambition that no one should be street homeless, I urge them to support us in these endeavours and to ensure that their local authorities are working with us to support prisoners on release, to ensure they are tagged and to ensure that victims and the public are protected. That is our key priority, and we can work together across this House to achieve that.
I visit prisons and meet prison officers and governors every week who are working incredibly hard to keep the public safe and to transform the lives of individuals in our prison system to ensure that when they leave prison, they leave in a better state than when they arrived. We are working to reduce reoffending and to support the Probation Service in reintegrating people into society, and to ensure in the meantime that people are tagged and victims and the public are kept safe. We are working incredibly hard getting on with the job of fixing the mess we inherited and rebuilding our justice system that was left so broken, and I urge hon. Members across the House to support us in their local area in that work.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I thank her for her assiduous work on all these subjects. As she says, we are rightly rolling out world-leading restriction zones, ensuring that it is offenders who are restricted, where that is appropriate. Indeed, we have the exclusion zones as well, where they are appropriate, and obviously these decisions are made by probation practitioners. She rightly highlights the work we are doing to accelerate the roll-out of tagging at prisons to ensure the safety and security of the system and so that tags are installed at the prison gate as soon as possible.
The hon. Lady makes a number of thoughtful and helpful contributions. It is very important that housing and homelessness are tackled among the prison leaver population, to ensure that they have the opportunity to build a life and not reoffend, and we will work with local authorities as effectively as possible to ensure that prisoners are not at risk of becoming homeless. It is a priority of this Prime Minister and this Government to tackle homelessness across the board, which was reinforced by the announcement yesterday of £874 million of priority funding to tackle homelessness. We are already extending the period by which collaboration must happen between the prison and probation unit and local authorities, so that they have the maximum period possible to put in place arrangements that ensure victims’ safety and the public’s safety.
The hon. Member rightly raised tagging at source, which we have had a very successful pilot of. This has not been done previously by any Government. We recognise it as an opportunity to really improve the work that is happening, and we are working at pace to ramp up tagging at source. She also raised the restriction zones. I can only reiterate that these are world-leading measures we are putting in place. We are not just fixing the mess that we inherited but working at pace to make this system work in the interests of victims and the public, and creating a society that everyone can contribute to.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that ensuring that there is purposeful activity in prisons, and that prisoners can gain life skills and work skills while they are in prison, will help to reduce reoffending and help to tackle the prison capacity challenge that we have. She will recognise that the capacity challenge we inherited makes all of this harder—it makes everything we are doing in the prison system harder. That is why we are both building more prison spaces and ensuring that we invest in and support rehabilitation while people are in prison, to reduce the need to recall people when they reoffend. We are tackling this on all fronts, and I appreciate my hon. Friend’s support for our efforts.
It is not Government policy to provide tents to people being released from prison who are at risk of being homeless. We are clear that tents should never be an acceptable housing solution. The hon. Member will know that overall housing responsibility rests with local authorities in England and Wales. I assure him that we are working very closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to tackle the scourge of homelessness across the board, including among the prison leaver cohort that he is concerned about. He can support this work by encouraging his local authority to engage in pre-release panels, so that this work can be done collaboratively right across the UK to ensure that nobody leaves prison homeless.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that we must build more prison places, and we are working at pace to do that. Obviously, I will not comment on independent judicial decisions that are made in particular cases, but he should be reassured to know that when it comes to tackling acquisitive crime, tagging is appropriate and individualised to the offender, to ensure that it tackles their particular challenges in terms of reoffending. An acquisitive crime GPS tag pilot found that offenders were 20% less likely to reoffend within 12 months. We are working across the board to tackle all these issues in the round.
The hon. Gentleman will have heard the answers I have given on the business as usual that we inherited: it was always the plan that from 1 October, offenders would normally be tagged at their accommodation. We are presuming that more offenders and individuals released from prison will be eligible for tags than at any point in history, and we are investing significantly in that. We have undertaken a pilot of tagging prisoners at the prison, which has been shown to be successful, and we will work at pace to roll that out further as quickly as possible.
The contract with Serco was signed by the Conservative party, and its performance did not originally meet expectations, but we have focused on driving rapid improvement and ensuring that we turn that failing performance around, so that it is meeting contractual expectations and working with us at pace to make the improvements that we want to see in our system. We will continue to keep all these matters under review, as we would with any contract that the Government have entered into.