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