- 5/23/2025
Former prisons minister Ann Widdecombe has criticised Government plans to chemically castrate paedophiles, warning the policy will simply "create an awful lot of work for an awful lot of lawyers."Speaking to GB News, Widdecombe expressed serious concerns about the proposal to forcibly administer medication to sex offenders.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Now, killers and rapists could be let out of jail as soon as one third through their sentences
00:06under the biggest shakeup of sentencing laws in over 30 years. Now, the new proposals mean that
00:13serious offenders, including those convicted of rape, manslaughter and attempts of murder,
00:18could be released early. Short sentences under 12 months will also be scrapped,
00:23with thousands of offenders serving their time in the community, your community, instead.
00:30And in one of the most controversial moves of all, the government, the Labour Party,
00:34is expanding the use of chemical castration for sex offenders, and that includes paedophiles.
00:41Well, early today, our political editor, Chris Hope, spoke to the former Justice Secretary
00:45and the author of the new Sentencing Review, and that is, of course, David Gawke.
00:50David Gawke, thank you for joining us on GB News. The central idea here is earned progression,
00:56so criminals can't be released automatically at this stage, but they earn the right to be released early.
01:02That's right. I think we should set out the context, which is that our prisons are full.
01:07They are forecast, or they were forecast to reach capacity in November for the adult male estates.
01:13That's now been put back to the spring because of some action the government took.
01:17But we are still forecast to run out in the spring, and by the time we get to early 2028,
01:23the number of prisoners is going to exceed capacity by something like 9,500.
01:28So action does need to be taken.
01:30The key measure here is, as you say, earned progression.
01:33And what we're saying there is that rather than prisoners who are currently being released 40% of the way through the sentence,
01:39they should be released a third of the way through their sentence, if they have behaved, stuck by the rules.
01:44Then they move to the second stage, which is in the community, but under close supervision.
01:51So we would be using, for example, electronic tags, curfews, maybe full home detention.
01:59And then a final third, where offenders will be on licence.
02:05They're in the community. If they re-offend again, they can go back to prison.
02:09But a lighter touch because they're less risk there.
02:12We think that will improve behavioural women in prisons.
02:15It will help offenders prepare for moving back into the community.
02:21And we think with that intensive supervision stage in the middle, that will help protect society.
02:27How will victims feel?
02:28I mean, they want to see criminals punished for doing crime to them.
02:35And you're saying release them after a third of their sentence?
02:37I think one thing that we should certainly do is be more transparent with everybody, but especially victims.
02:44I think they do feel a frustration where they hear one number and then people are released earlier.
02:48I think we need to be explicit at the point of sentencing, in terms of explaining sentences, precisely what is happening.
02:54So I think we need to be honest and transparent with the public on this.
02:58But the wider point here is that I think what most victims want is to ensure that there is less crime in future, that there will be fewer victims in future, that what has happened to them does not happen to other people.
03:10So your plan will cut crime?
03:11Well, I believe, and the evidence supports this, that if you have effective measures taken in the community, combined with prisons, prisons will still remain a huge part of our structure, of our criminal justice system.
03:26But if you have more effective measures in the community, you will rehabilitate more offenders.
03:32That reduces re-offending, that reduces crime, and you will have fewer victims.
03:36Have you ever been a victim of crime personally?
03:38I've been burgled.
03:39How do you feel if it's burgled?
03:41Look, I think anybody who has been a victim of crime feels very angry, upset, wants action to be taken.
03:50I completely empathise with anybody in that situation.
03:54I've experienced it myself.
03:56But what we have to do is, first of all, recognise the realities about the prison numbers.
04:01And second, come up with a system that is really effective in terms of stopping that criminal behaviour happening again.
04:09And at the moment, yes, we throw a lot of people in prison, and we throw a lot of people in prison for quite a long time, compared to almost every other Western European country.
04:19But are we as effective as we might be in terms of stopping people offending again, sorting out whatever is driving that re-offending, and addressing those problems?
04:31And I think we can do better on that.
04:33How would you feel, though, with an early-release paedophile living on your street, for example?
04:37Well, look, I understand that these issues are a concern.
04:41Again, we have to remember that most offenders, most prisoners, are going to be released at some point.
04:48And I think most people would be more reassured if we've got effective measures in place.
04:54If we're making use of new technology, if we've got a really effective tagging regime, that is likely to be more reassuring than a position where we put people in prison,
05:05and then they're just dumped out on society, and nothing is done to address the underlying issue.
05:12Is all this an interim measure before those new prisons are built, the new cell space is found?
05:17Nine and a half thousand more cells needed by 2028 is a lot.
05:21Yes, it is a great deal, but that is the scale of the problem that we have.
05:26And look, the government is spending a lot of money on building new prisons.
05:32But there comes a question as to, in my view, how far you can keep going building more and more prisons.
05:39It's worth bearing in mind, Chris, a couple of statistics.
05:42In 1993, the prison population in England and Wales was 44,000.
05:48Today, it is 88,000.
05:50Also worth bearing in mind, if you look at the incarceration rate, i.e. how many people are in prison per 100,000.
05:58In the Netherlands, it's 64, in Germany, it's 68, in England and Wales, it's 139.
06:04Now, I don't believe...
06:05Twice.
06:05Twice as there. Now, I don't believe that the people of England and Wales are twice as bad as the people of the Netherlands and Germany when it comes to committing crimes.
06:16Perhaps they're more in tune with what victims want, David Gorg.
06:19Well, maybe that's right. But I tell you, it's not as effective as it might be in reducing re-offending.
06:28So is re-offending worse in this country compared to other countries?
06:30I think, yeah, we're certainly not the best. You can point to countries with much better re-offending rates with lower prison populations.
06:37And by the way, the hard-pressed taxpayer, who is under a lot of pressure at the moment, it costs for every single prison place, on average, £54,000 a year.
06:47Now, use that money in the community. There's an awful lot that you can do, whether that's about tagging and what have you.
06:56There's more technology coming on that can assist us in all of this.
07:00I think from the point of view of the taxpayer, I'm not sure the taxpayer is getting a good deal from our criminal justice system at the moment either.
07:06There's also a recommendation to allow the chemical castration of paedophiles. Is that your idea?
07:14Well, our recommendation is much more limited.
07:16Yes.
07:16What we say is...
07:17Twice prisons.
07:18We say you should look at chemical suppressants that, for some sex offenders, not all, it could be useful in terms of reducing their sexual desires.
07:28And if that is the case, we should look at the evidence of that, build that evidence up.
07:33But the government is saying today that it wants to force people to be castrated. Do you agree with that?
07:38Yeah, the government's looking to go further than we are proposing. We recommend voluntary and building up the evidence base.
07:44So, as I say, the government wants to go further.
07:46And just finally, a personal question to you. Have you rejoined the Conservative Party?
07:50Chris, I'm a member of the Conservative Party. I even voted Conservative in the local elections a few weeks ago.
07:57And not many people can say that.
07:59And you yourself, of course, have been on quite a journey with your politics.
08:03Why are you now helping out the Labour Party? Do you want to improve the outcomes from our criminal justice system?
08:09Whoever is in power, we have got a problem. If the Conservatives had won the last election, they would have been faced with that problem.
08:15And I just want to help solve a problem.
08:18David Gorg, on the day that your censoring review is released, thank you for joining us on GB News.
08:23Pleasure to be with you.
08:24And that was David Gorg there with our political editor, Chris Hope.
08:29And I'm delighted to say I'm joined in the studio now by the former Prisons Minister, Anne Whittacombe.
08:35Anne, it was a pleasure to have your company.
08:37You listened patiently there to Mr Gorg.
08:39Are you convinced that this is the correct plan, a plan that's going to put victims finally first?
08:45Not remotely, because what is driving this plan?
08:49It isn't a feeling that we ought to look at the justice system, you know, and review it.
08:54It isn't that at all.
08:56It isn't that we think the victim's getting a bad deal and we ought to review that.
08:59No.
09:00It's that there aren't enough prison places.
09:02And that is what is driving all of this.
09:06And when a sentence comes down to a third, and it could be for quite a serious offence, we've heard that.
09:11When a sentence comes down to a third, that is solely in order to free up prison space.
09:18Now, that is completely the wrong way around.
09:20I had exactly this problem.
09:23Now, you heard there that the prison population in 1993 was 40,000.
09:29I came in to the prison's job in 1995.
09:31It went up in my time to 60,000.
09:35And I didn't let them all out.
09:36I brought in a prison ship from the United States.
09:39I took disused port-a-cabins from Norwegian oil rigs, put them down in the medium-security prisons.
09:45I was about to, but the general election frustrated me.
09:49I was about to take over a holiday camp.
09:51Because if you think of it, you've got all the accommodation there.
09:54You do take out the swimming pool and the cinema.
09:56But you've got all the accommodation there.
09:58All you need, you put a secure perimeter around it.
10:02And then you've got a low-security prison.
10:05Where's the problem?
10:06Well, the problem now would be that would probably contravene the human rights of prisons, put them in containers.
10:12It would be treated as if it were some kind of containment camp.
10:16That would never be allowed.
10:17But one point that you were picking up there, when Mr Gorg said,
10:22I doubt that Britons are twice as likely to be criminals as Scandinavians.
10:27I wonder if that's true.
10:28I mean, if you actually look at Scandinavia, and I took a very close look at the Norwegian prison system not very long ago for the purposes of a documentary.
10:38I mean, first of all, their population is a fraction of ours, of course.
10:41And secondly, the recidivism rate is so low precisely because there's such a low population.
10:50So there's no comparison there.
10:52And I do actually think that in terms of guns and knives and drugs, Britain is probably more violent than those countries are.
11:01Yeah. And also, the real controversial point today was this notion of mandatory chemical castration.
11:09This is something that's often been linked, if you like, to quite extreme politics.
11:14It doesn't feel like the Labour Party at all.
11:16In practice, you have grave concerns this could even work.
11:20Well, exactly.
11:21First of all, as we've heard, it's not guaranteed to work.
11:26That's the first thing.
11:27So you could actually release a Peter file into the community and say, oh, it's all right, he's been castrated.
11:32And it doesn't work.
11:34And so, I mean, that is the first danger.
11:35The second danger is simply that what you're going to do is you're going to create an awful lot of work for an awful lot of lawyers.
11:40Because the idea that the state can forcibly make you go through a process of taking drugs, it can actually make you do that, strap you down if you resist or whatever it is they're going to do.
11:56Really, if that is where the way the state is going, then it's just going to be one long legal hassle.
12:02Frankly, I think Starmer's gone mad.
12:04I mean, I thought that for a long time.
12:05Anne Woodacombe, as a former prisons minister yourself, do you think this plan from a former Conservative Justice Minister, aiding and abetting a present day minister, Shabana Mahmood, will it make Britain's streets safer for Britain's?
12:24Yes or no?
12:25No.
12:25Why not?
12:26Absolutely no.
12:27As I say, it's driven by the need to free up prison spaces.
12:30It's not driven by what is going to make things safer.
12:33The big deal for me has always been what you do with people when you've got them in prison.
12:40That is the crucial thing.
12:42If you don't have proper training, proper workshops, proper education, offending behaviour courses like temper management, for example, if you don't have those things, then the chances are that the chap who leaves the prison gate is as bad and maybe possibly worse than the chap who entered the prison gates.
12:59That creates more victims.
13:02That creates more court costs.
13:04And when people say to me, oh, it's very liberal to talk about rehabilitation, I say, no, it ain't.
13:09It's actually a crucial tool of public protection.
13:13And when will anybody wake up to that?
13:15And that's what they do in Texas.
13:16And perhaps we should be taking a leaf out of their book.
13:18Anne Woodacombe, fantastic as ever.
13:20Anne Woodacombe, fantastic as ever.
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