Home Office and Ministry of Justice
House of Commons · Commons Chamber · 29 Jun 2026 · 49 speeches · Official Report
[Relevant documents: First Report of the Justice Committee, Courts and Tribunals Bill, HC 192 ; Sixth Report of the Justice Committee of Session 2024-26, Tackling the drugs crisis in our prisons, HC 557, and the Government response, HC 1599 ; Seventh Report of the Justice Committee of Session 2024-26, Ending the cycle of reoffending - part one: rehabilitation in prisons, HC 469, and the Government response, HC 1639 .]
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That,
(1) for the year ending with 31 March 2027, for expenditure by the Home Office:
(a) further resources, not exceeding £10,441,629,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1855 of Session 2024-26,
(b) further resources, not exceeding £860,906,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and
(c) a further sum, not exceeding £10,985,000,000, be granted to His Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament; and
(2) for the year ending with 31 March 2027, for expenditure by the Ministry of Justice:
(a) further resources, not exceeding £9,308,668,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1855 of Session 2024-26,
(b) further resources, not exceeding £1,453,047,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and
(c) a further sum, not exceeding £8,887,226,000, be granted to His Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.- ( Mark Ferguson .)
The debate will be opened by the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee, Mr Speaker, and yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting the debate, and the Minister for being here-I hope she will find it useful. We often speak in this Chamber about defence spending, and rightly so. Defence keeps our nation safe, but justice is what keeps the public safe, ensuring that victims receive justice and that offenders are removed from our streets. According to the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Justice’s total expenditure for 2024-25 was £15.5 billion, with an income of £1.9 billion, resulting in a net cost to the taxpayer of £13.6 billion. To put that into perspective, it is the equivalent of just two weeks of welfare spending. When I refer to one justice system, I mean the police, the courts, prison officers and the Probation Service working together as a single interdependent system. When one part underperforms, it creates a domino effect across the entire system. Since the beginning of this parliamentary term, the Public Accounts Committee has published a number of critical reports on the criminal justice system, covering Crown courts, police productivity, probation efficiency, violence against women and girls, MOJ reports and prison estate capacity. These are not separate issues; they are interconnected pressures within one system, and they must be analysed, funded and reformed accordingly, not in isolation. I suggest that the PAC is a very useful Committee for considering these types of cross-cutting...
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when prisoners are engaged in retraining or rehabilitation, they can then return to the community they were brought up in, but that is often where their problems started? The report might be able to recommend things that can be done in prison, but when people get back to their community, that takes over and they start where they left off. Does he agree that such issues must be sorted out in the location, in the community, and in the place people come from, to ensure that they do not go back to their bad habits?
The hon. Member makes an interesting point, and the Government must consider in the round how they can give people useful training, work and leisure in prison, so that they come out with some skills. Where people go, how they are housed and what employment offers they get are issues that the Government need to consider seriously-it is a really big problem. The number of recalls to prison is now at an all-time high, demonstrating a system under severe stress. Planned reforms, including early-release schemes, risk placing even greater pressure on an already overstretched probation service. Well-run probation is not optional; it is essential. It is what enables people to reintegrate into society and prevents the cycle of crime from continuing. In conclusion, the criminal justice system must be treated as one system. The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice need to work much more closely together to resolve some of the serious problems that I have outlined. Investment, reform and accountability must reflect that reality. Fixing one part in isolation will not solve the wider problem. As I have said, democracy is founded on an effective and properly functioning criminal justice system to keep its citizens safe. Serious criminals need to be removed from society by imprisonment, but the system must help itself by taking strenuous steps to reduce reoffending, which I repeat costs this country £20.9 billion a year. It is a well-thumbed maxim that, whatever the cause, justice...
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this important debate. The debate follows a joint application by the Chairs of the Justice, Public Accounts and Home Affairs Committees. There is cross-Committee concern for our criminal justice system, as the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), has just said. I thank my fellow Chairs for their focus on the issue in its widest sense. As Chair of the Justice Committee, I will focus my remarks on the estimates for the Ministry of Justice. A year ago, the Justice Committee was granted a similar debate on the spending of the Ministry of Justice. I noted at that point the positive settlement that the MOJ had received as part of the spending review, including a £7 billion investment aimed at delivering 14,000 new prison places by 2031 and £700 million a year for the Probation Service by 2028-29, in the light of the Sentencing Act 2026 reforms. Although I welcome many of the actions that the Government have taken over the past year to reform our criminal justice system, there is still a great deal of progress to be made, as those targets indicate. The Ministry of Justice suffered years of budget cuts during the years of Tory austerity, meaning that when this Government were elected in 2024, MOJ expenditure was 11% less in real terms than it was in 2010. The main estimates for 2026-27 confirm that the MOJ’s day-to-day spending is set to increase by...
I am grateful to the Chair of the Justice Committee for giving way. What contribution to reducing the Crown court backlog does he believe curtailing the right to jury trials will make?
First, one has to look at the Leveson package-the two volumes that Sir Brian Leveson has put together over 1,000 pages. That has 180 recommendations, a very small number of which deal with this issue. It is undeniable that it will be one factor that has an effect. Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that it is very difficult to calculate at this stage what effect it will have. The changes to jury trials-not the abolition of jury trials-are moving the line so that some more cases will be dealt with at a summary level. As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, I prefer to look at the practical problems there may be in replacing some jury trials, with the additional pressures on the magistrates court. As a matter of principle, we can differ; as a matter of practice, I suspect he would agree with me. I ask him to agree with me that there will be some benefit, but I agree that it has not been calculated as yet. Let me pick up what I was saying. A malfunctioning courts system is bad for victims, bad for defendants and bad for faith in our justice system, which has ramifications for our democracy. I will conclude by touching on the Legal Aid Agency, which affects civil and criminal legal aid. Legal Aid Agency spending will rise by 10% year on year. That is driven by Government reforms that will result in higher billing in civil representation schemes, fee uplifts in crime lower schemes and additional operating costs. As I said last year, I was surprised to see that the spending...
The Crown court backlog is the most significant challenge facing the Ministry of Justice. Long delays in cases reaching trial undermine confidence in the whole justice system. I welcome the extra money that the Government have made available to increase the number of sitting days of the Crown court. I also welcome the additional funding to improve the physical condition of our courts and to invest in improved IT systems to make our courts run more efficiently. While the Government are right to take those steps, I am concerned that they are wasting time, effort and money in curtailing the rights of British citizens to a jury trial. This reform has been presented as a necessary step to improve the efficiency of the courts. However, evidence suggests the contrary. The Government are aware of analysis by criminal justice researchers that indicates that the entire package of Government reforms will save no more than 8% of Crown court time. More striking still, the introduction of judge-only trials is likely to deliver a saving of just 1.5% to 2.5%. That is a marginal efficiency gain compared with the curtailing of our citizens’ rights to a jury trial, and it does not take into account the potential wasted time in determining whether a trial is to be held in a magistrates court or the new Crown court bench division. I have previously asked the Lord Chancellor to set out the evidence to show how much of the backlog will be cut by his reduction of jury trials, but I have not...
Does the hon. Member have any figures disaggregating prison officers from the remainder of MOJ staff? Obviously, their working lives are very different.
I do not believe that information was provided, certainly not when it was presented to me, but if the hon. Lady has it, no doubt she will send it to me. Jury trials and staff absence are not the only areas where the Government are focusing on the wrong issue; a similar problem emerges in the management of our prisons. The Government seem to believe that recklessly releasing many thousands of criminals early will address the crisis of overcrowding, instead of investing in measures to ensure that they do not reoffend. I fear that releasing so many criminals so early in their sentences risks a wave of reoffending in the future. It is well established that when prisoners engage in meaningful educational or vocational courses, there are sizeable reductions in reoffending. More than 50% of adult prisoners have the literacy skills of an 11-year-old or lower; knowing this, one might think that the Government would seek to address the problem. The earned progression model should surely ensure that participation in education and training is compulsory to secure the very early releases that the Government are proposing. Instead, this Government are choosing to reduce the provision of prison education, astonishing though that might seem. That is of huge concern, because investment in prison education is cost-effective. Research in 2018 showed that the economic benefits of lower reoffending and higher levels of employment after release outweighed the costs of prisoner education by a...
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point about the ability of prison governors to spend money. I was speaking to a prison governor recently, who said that because of the amount he is allowed to spend, when the washing machine breaks, he cannot purchase a commercial one. He keeps buying ones from the high street, which naturally break after a week or so because of the level of washing his prison has to do. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that giving prison governors some more flexibility so that they can make decisions for the prisons they know best would actually save the MOJ money in the long run?
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I agree with her. Members of the Justice Committee hear that all the time when we visit prisons. For example, broken security netting cannot be repaired or replaced until some very long and convoluted process goes through Whitehall and comes back six months later, no doubt after many drones have flown in with however many packages of contraband goods. It is absolutely hopeless. We have to devolve proper responsibility and financial management to prison governors. Sitting on the Justice Committee, I have seen and heard at first hand the reality of how reduced educational opportunities are putting rehabilitation at risk, yet despite awareness of these dangers, the Government only partially accepted our formal recommendation to prioritise the delivery of core education provision. Estimates day debates allow the House to hold the Government to account, not just for how much they spend, but for how well they spend it. Curtailing jury trials for marginal gain and cutting back on prison education are not the reforms of a system focused on long-term effectiveness. If we are serious about delivering timely, fair and sustainable justice, we must prioritise the right kinds of investment that will deliver the reforms the justice system needs to protect victims as its No. 1 priority, to deliver justice and to get good value for money for the taxpayer.
I thank the Government for the considerable progress that has been made on criminal legal aid and other matters within the estimates since we have taken office. The courts system, as we have heard, was in the most dilapidated and decrepit state, and we had a dearth of judge recruitment between 2010 and 2018. The net result was that the entire justice system was on its knees. In that context, the 10% uplift in legal aid expenditure over two years was long overdue. I will ask the Minister a couple of questions. There have been significant problems with the Legal Aid Agency’s IT systems. Those problems are increasingly in hand, but it appears from House of Commons Library papers that there is a 75% reduction in capital spend at the Legal Aid Agency over the coming period. It is not clear to me whether that reporting is accurate or perhaps not right, because there is a proposal to spend significant money on the Legal Aid Agency’s IT systems, and I do not see how that would not fit within the capital estimates. It would be helpful if the Minister could report back, either today or to the Justice Committee subsequently, on how that has come about. The disparity seems extremely large. The entire system is still creaking heavily. In an environment in which we know that there may have to be further cuts to other Departments to fund the defence investment that is required, we must remember that the Ministry of Justice has experienced cuts not just since 2010, but since 1997. Legal aid...
Order. The right hon. Member for Makerfield.
Many thanks, Madam Deputy Speaker. My right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) suggested in December that this might be worth looking at again, and many of us in all parts of the House would be grateful for such an approach.
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell), and indeed, to follow all the Members who have contributed to what has been a very thoughtful debate. There seems to be a huge amount of cross-party consensus, indicated by the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter) and my colleague on the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). I commend the hon. Gentleman for the work that he does in championing sound public finances. I also agreed with a great deal of what he said about this being an issue across Government, and about the Public Accounts Committee therefore being well placed to contribute to the discussion and, indeed, the solutions. Failures to address these issues have significant effects, both on the public finances and on the most vulnerable people in society, and, indeed, they are issues that are often reflected in our constituency mailboxes. I was contacted recently by a young woman who had reported child sexual abuse to the police last year. Owing to repeated delays and cancellations, she has still not had her “achieving best evidence” interview with the police. That is extremely distressing for her, as all can imagine, but I am afraid it is symptomatic of the delays that persist within the criminal justice system, and we know that young victims are significantly more likely to withdraw from the justice process when a...
Not long ago, I had a meeting with a group of barristers at Wolverhampton Crown court. They were grateful to the Government for uncapping the number of hearing days and trial dates, which they said had made a significant difference to the court backlogs, but they also raised the problem of prisoners not arriving in court on time. They felt that dealing with it would make a significant impact on ensuring that cases did proceed. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government could perhaps take another look at that?
I entirely agree, and my hon. Friend has anticipated a point that I was going to make. The increased court days are clearly vital to maintaining productivity and the efficiency of the use of court time, although that only works if the court system itself is working. We have seen very good examples of the way in which the additional days are already being used to clear backlogs and reduce the number of outstanding cases. In the English courts, we have seen evidence of the prioritisation of domestic abuse cases involving vulnerable witnesses. This can reduce waiting times, particularly for people involved in those sensitive cases-and yes, that makes a big difference to them individually, but it also makes an impact on our system as a whole. As my hon. Friend has said, we need a court estate that is fit for purpose in order to maximise the use of these additional days. I too have visited my local court, in this instance Newcastle Crown court. What was obvious, even on the day I was there, was the consequence of some of the malfunctions in the system that make it difficult for court cases to proceed, such as faulty infrastructure, the flooding of parts of the court building, dock alarms or door locks failing to operate. As a result of such problems, staff do not feel safe enough to do their work and maintain the security of the courtroom, and therefore cannot go ahead. Often it is vulnerable victims who bear the brunt of delays and cancelled court hearings. On the day I was at...
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
It is a pleasure to speak in today’s estimates day debate on criminal justice, and I put on the record my thanks to the three Chairs of the Select Committees that suggested this debate to the Backbench Business Committee: the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown); the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley); and the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter). I also thank all hon. Members who have stuck it out in the Chamber on a Monday evening, who clearly care about criminal justice. Politics is all about priorities, and so often the justice system falls a little short. Unless members of the public have had experience of the criminal justice system, have been victims of crime or have a loved one who has had the experience of going through the system, it does not necessarily appear in their top five priorities for the Government, but I thank all those who work to keep the criminal justice system functioning despite the lack of investment, the often crumbling infrastructure and the huge amount of pressure on them to ensure that justice is served. The system as it stands lets down victims and defendants alike. It fails to rehabilitate offenders, and so many never see the justice that they deserve. The Crown court backlog is clearly unacceptably high, and that opinion is shared across the...
I call the shadow Minister.
I am grateful to be able to respond to this estimates day debate considering the expenditure of the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office as it relates to criminal justice. I thank all Members who contributed. I especially thank the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), for opening the debate, and for his sponsorship of the application for debate, alongside the Chairs of the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee. I want to thank all the prison, probation and police officers, the staff that work in the relevant agencies, and the many workers and volunteers in the associated charities who work hard in our justice system. Whatever we debate, and whatever the Government decide around expenditure, they are the ones who have to go out and deliver the priorities of the Government of the day. I am afraid that, whatever the topic and whatever part of their activities and spending plans we are debating now, we are debating a shadow Government-a Government in name only. We are debating the spending plans of a Government who lost their Prime Minister a week ago. We are scrutinising the priorities of a Ministry of Justice whose Lord Chancellor serves at the pleasure of a Labour party that is, as we speak, sounding the fanfares and preparing a coronation for its newest MP to become Prime Minister-a Prime Minister whose team has briefed The Spectator that they are going to sack the Lord Chancellor....
Does my hon. Friend recall that when the Labour party announced its early release system, it said words to the effect of those who have been imprisoned for the most serious and heinous crimes would not be covered by the early release scheme? Does it not seem extraordinary that rapists and those who have committed serious sexual assaults are in fact eligible for this early release scheme?
My hon. Friend is right, and I will discuss his point in more detail. My hon. Friend said, “words to the effect”, but that was the exact wording that Ministers used in this Chamber, on the Government website and in press releases: the Government said that the most serious offenders would be excluded. When we challenged that, behind the scenes-and even on live television, on Sky News-Ministers said that what we were saying was not true; as we now know for sure, it was. Labour tells us that this move is necessary. I imagine that Labour Members who genuinely care about these issues have been told by Ministers that here is nothing else they can do-that they have no choice and it is all because of the prison overcrowding crisis. I want to tackle that in detail, because that is not true. There are always different choices to be made. The estimates before us, explaining the spending that is planned on prisons and prison spaces, highlight that most of the Department’s capital budget is allocated to the prison programme, which was awarded £7 billion up to 2030 in the recent spending review. Ministers know that their planned prison space numbers are essentially the same as ours were. The Minister also knows that the prisons that the Government have opened were paid for and started by the last Government. I share the frustration that Ministers at the time felt with the challenges in prison building; this Government already know how that feels at first hand, considering they have failed...
As my hon. Friend and the House will know, the reoffending rate is around 50%. Given the numbers he has just announced, it is inevitable that serious crimes will be committed. If the Government are committed to this policy, which I hope they are not, and want to release people early, which I do not agree with, they should not release these serious criminals. They should instead release the less serious criminals.
Order. I will remind the shadow Minister that this is a debate on the estimates-perhaps we could return to them.
If you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am talking about a major issue that relates directly to the estimates: the prison building programme, the need for that programme and what the Government are doing to manage the prison population. I believe it is directly related to the estimates in that regard. I repeat, sincerely, that multiple Governments of different parties have let prisoners out of prison early in order to manage prison crises, but they have never let rapists and child groomers out early. Government Members are therefore backing a totally unnecessary way of managing prison capacity. They really do not have to do it. They are being forced into doing so, and I feel very sorry for them as a result. It is difficult to understand how the Government can lay these estimates before the House and put forward a proposal for changes to sentencing if they do not even know how many people they are letting out of prison and for what reason. I cannot believe that the Minister thinks that that is acceptable, and it will be difficult for her to justify. But, to be fair, she may also struggle to answer a basic question about her own responsibilities-about her plans to erode our right to jury trial and to abolish our right to elect. The Conservatives will oppose any erosion of the right to jury trial. It is a constitutional protection that belongs to people, not to the convenience of a Government. The evidence does not support the case that jury trials are the cause of the...
I associate myself with the remarks of those who have thanked the Chairs of the various Select Committees for securing this important debate, and I thank everybody who made incredibly thoughtful contributions to it, although there was the odd exception. To govern is to choose, and those on the Opposition- [ Interruption. ] I am coming to it. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) is getting started early. We know what choices the Opposition would make, because the Government’s inheritance in the criminal justice system was intolerable. Our prisons were allowed to run red hot so that the most serious offenders had nowhere to be locked up-a total dereliction of duty from the so-called party of law and order. In our courts, we had record and rising backlogs-there is consensus about that in the House-with both victims and defendants seeing intolerable delays. I could not agree more with the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) that this is one system, and it must keep the public safe and command public confidence. Yes, indeed, justice delayed is justice denied. We see the brass-neckedness of Opposition Members-there is no apology-but this Government do not duck the choices. As I will come to, in both areas we have grasped the nettle. We have sought expert advice in the form of the independent review led by Sir Brian Leveson into the state of our criminal courts, and from David Gauke in relation to sentencing. We have heard the conclusions of...
The Minister is absolutely right: it is necessary to have confidence in our criminal justice system. Will she therefore answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan)? Will the Government be letting out rapists and other serious offenders under the early release scheme, and if so, how many?
I am talking about courts, but I will turn to sentencing and prisons in due course. However, I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the Sentencing Act provisions, which will come into force in September and to which he refers, were made necessary by the Opposition’s failure to invest in prison places over many years. Over 14 years in government, they made their choice, and they added net 500 prison places. In the first two years, this Government have already delivered an additional 3,000 places, and the biggest prison building programme since the Victorians is set to deliver 14,000 additional prison places. Let me return to the Crown court backlog. Reform cannot be avoided. To bring the backlog down, it is vital we ensure that the right cases are heard in the right place. It cannot be right that defendants can insist on their right to a jury trial in cases that could be heard by magistrates under even the existing sentencing powers. That is not fair on victims, and it is not fair that those cases are in the same queue as other, more serious cases, which have to have a jury trial, but a timely one. We cannot duck those choices. The proposals to increase magistrates courts’ sentencing powers, remove the right to elect and create a Crown court bench division are sound. When a triable either-way case is heard in the magistrates court, it moves far faster than in the Crown court. We have to take a proportionate and hard-headed approach that balances the rights of defendants, the...
Will you answer the question?
The hon. Member has had an entire urgent question in which to ventilate these issues, and I am here to debate the estimates and address some of the other points that have been raised. I do not duck the essential point that our early release scheme will apply to some of those guilty of the offences to which he refers, if safe to do so. If they have misbehaved in prison, they will not benefit from those provisions. The point is that this is not a free-for-all. They will be subject to tagging and control on the outside. That is why the investment in probation is critical.
The Minister is completely wrong. The releases are automatic. There will be no prevention of a release of someone on a standard determinate sentence, regardless of what the risk assessment shows. The Minister must at least be accurate in describing the policy.
The policy exists, as I have said, critically in the context of a restored probation system, and it is to that which I come right now. Probation is an indispensable part of the scheme that the hon. Member talks about-a probation system that was, as I have said, absolutely gutted under the Opposition. Probation and community services will receive an additional £700 million by the final year of the spending review. In real terms, that looks like recruiting at least an additional 1,300 trainee probation officers by March 2027, on top of the over 2,300 who have been onboarded in the past two years. Those hard-working probation officers-not the slackers that perhaps were portrayed by the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox); far from it- doing some of the most difficult jobs in our public services have been delivered a 6% headline increase in pay, and rightly so, because they do such valuable work. They have been given the tools with which to do that work. We have the biggest expansion of tagging in British history, with a presumption that every offender will be tagged on release from prison, save in very specific circumstances. All of that keeps the public safe, and staff will be given the technology to enable them to do their work in a more efficient and accurate way with the Justice Transcribe AI-powered tool. These investments and reforms will ensure that probation officers can have the biggest impact by focusing on those who present the highest risk. A number of...
On prevention being better than cure, would the Minister care to comment upon the reduction in provision of prison education before she concludes her remarks?
Prison education is vital, and I have seen some fantastic examples of it, in particular on a recent visit to High Down. Prison education can take many forms, such as vocational training and education in a conventional sense. In some senses, the bigger question is how do we make our prisons safe? There is no point in having outstanding education-I agree with the hon. Member that it is important; I do not think we disagree on this-if drones are bringing drugs and contraband into prisons, as he pointed out, and if prisons are overcrowded. If that is the case, it is almost impossible to deliver and see the benefit of that education. The fact that this Government are prioritising, through a £40 million investment, a drone prevention programme, that we are building new prisons that are fit for people to live in and receive that education, is a choice that makes sense and that, as I said, prevents so much of the problem. Violence reduction units, the prison reform Bill, and the workforce plan that the Home Office has put forward are all part of the choice-I return to that theme-that the Government make, whether on policing, courts, prisons, or probation. We choose to fix the mess, and when we see a problem we make the choices required to fix it. Investment, modernisation and reform: the contrast between that and the choices that Opposition Members made when in government could not be starker. We must now give the plan a chance to work.
I call Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown to wind up the debate briefly.
This has been a constructive debate, and everybody has aired the themes that I raised throughout the debate. The Minister has outlined one or two areas where things are going a little better, namely perhaps a reduction in some of the Crown court backlogs, but that is countervailed by increases in the backlog in magistrates courts. I echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) -as I am sure the Minister would-because we should pay grateful thanks to those police officers, probation officers and court officers who often have to work in incredibly difficult conditions, delivering some of the most difficult tasks in society. We should thank them. The most worrying thing I heard tonight concerns the early release scheme, and the number of potentially very serious criminals who will be released. The Minister has made very clear that government is about choices. I think this is the wrong choice, but if she and the Government are determined to do this, let us be honest about it. She did not answer my question about numbers, but perhaps if I table a parliamentary question she will-I will do that to see whether she does answer it. I think this is the wrong choice, and I urge her again to rethink it. I also echo comments made by my colleagues. The reoffending rate is far too high at around 50%, and we must find a way of giving prisoners meaningful education, training and skills, so that when they come out of prison they will, we hope, not reoffend....