Chemical castration can lead to 60% fewer crimes by sex offenders, says justice secretary

Mahmood says chemical castration can lead to 60% reduction in offending by sex offenders

Charlotte Nichols (Lab) asked Mahmood how many future offences could be prevented by chemical castration. She said this would only apply to people who have already offended, implying that the impact might be limited.

Mahmood said studies show that chemical castration can lead to a 60% reduction in offending.

She accepted that this might not help with sexual offenders whose offending is motivated primarly by power. But for other offenders, primarly motivated by sexual compulsion, it could have a “big and positive impact”, she said.

Mahmood said studies looking chemical castration have been taking place for years, but she said her Tory predecessors were not very interested. She was different, she suggested. “I’m not squeamish about taking these further measures,” she said.

Key events

Why Gauke proposals will lead to big reduction in number of women in prison

In the Commons Mahmood has just restated her belief that these plans will lead to a huge reduction in the number of female prisoners.

This is what the independent sentencing review report says on this topic.

In the year ending June 2024, 77% of women sentenced to custody received a sentence of 12 months or less. Third sector organisations informed the Review through engagement that for many women, custody is not the right place due to their vulnerabilities (such as being victims of crime themselves) or because they pose low-level of risk to the public. The rate of self-harm incidents in the female estate is stark: from December 2023 to December 2024, the rate of self-harm was nine times higher in women’s prisons (6,056 incidents per 1,000 prisoners) than men’s prisons (687 incidents per 1,000 prisoners). The Farmer Review (2019) also established that relationships are women’s most prevalent criminogenic need. Family relationships can be damaged when women are given short custodial sentences, particularly as women are often housed far away from home, making it difficult and costly to maintain relationships.

The Review’s recommendations in chapter three promote the use of custody as a last resort. Recommendation 3.1, to legislate to ensure the use of short custodial sentences are only used in exceptional circumstances, will encourage women to be diverted from custody to more effective sanction and support. In encouraging a reduction in the use of short sentences, the Review aims to reduce the harm that female offenders may experience.

The government says it is going to introduce “a presumption against custodial sentences of less than a year – in favour of tough community sentences that better punish offenders and stop them reoffending”.

The Gauke report says women comprise only 4% of the prison population. But it also says 60% of women in jail, or under supervision, say they have been victims of domestic abuse.

Mahmood says chemical castration can lead to 60% reduction in offending by sex offenders

Mahmood said studies show that chemical castration can lead to a 60% reduction in offending.

Mahmood rejects claim that changes will make sentencing system less transparent

Back in the Commons Desmond Swayne (Con) complained that that current sentences are a “fiction” because the amount of time spent in jail is much less than the sentence read out in court. He said these reforms would make this worse.

Mahmood said that Swayne was wrong, and that David Gauke, who wrote the report, agrees with Swayne about the importance of transparency in sentencing.

One of the recommendations in the Gauke report says:

Government should consider how to make sentencing outcomes as explicit and unambiguous as possible, perhaps through a combination of guidance, national and tailored communications and engagement.

Here is the Ministry of Justice’s news release summing up its response to the Gauke review on sentencing.

Mahmood says sentencing plans will lead to ‘huge reduction in number of women going to prison’

Mahmood tells MPs that the Gauke proposals will lead to “a huge reduction in the number of women going to prison”. She goes on:

Approximately two thirds go in for sentences of less than one year. Many of those women are victims of domestic abuse. In future, we expect the numbers to drop very, very significantly, and I know we will make progress in that regard.

Josh Babarinde, the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokesperson, said his party would be pushing for guarantees that domestic abusers would be excluded from the early release provisons. But, overall, he was supportive of the government, and he condemned the Tories for playing politics with this issue.

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, responded to Mahmood’s statement. He restated his claim that the government is decriminalising some offences. (See 9.24am.) He told MPs:

Should violent and prolific criminals be on the streets or behind bars? I think they should be behind bars. For all the Justice secretary’s rhetoric, the substance of her statement could not be clearer. She’s OK, her party is OK, with criminals terrorising our streets and tormenting our country.

In response, Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, said the Tories should be apologosing for leaving the prison system “on the verge of collapse”.

Mahmood confirms she will consider case for mandatory chemical castration for sex offenders

Much of what is in the sentencing review has been well trailed in advance, but it also contained a plan to extend the use of chemical castration. This made the Sun splash today. This is a useful piece of news management because the Sun has devoted far more space to the chemical castration plan, which is likely to affect a small number of offenders, and far less space to the main thrust of the plan, offenders spending less time in jail, which is likely to affect far more people and which runs counter to the Sun’s default ‘lock ‘em all up’ approach to penal policy.

Sun splash Photograph: The Sun

This is what Mahmood said about the plan in her statement.

The review has recommended we continue a pilot of so-called medication to manage problematic sexual arousal. I will go further with a national roll out, beginning in two regions covering 20 prisons, and I am exploring whether mandating the approach is possible. Of course, it is vital that this approach is taken alongside psychological interventions that target other causes of offending, power and control.

Shabana Mahmood gives statement to MPs on sentencing review

Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is making a statement to MPs now about the findings of the sentencing review, and the government’s response to it. (See 9.24am.)

She started by pointing out that a year ago today Rishi Sunak called the general election. She said that Sunak called the election then because the prisons were full, and he was about to have to implement an early release scheme.

‘Extremely high’ asylum initial refusal rates leaving people ‘trapped in limbo’, charity says

The Home Office report on asylum figures also reveals that the proportion of claims being granted at initial decison has fallen below 50%. The rate was 61% in the year ending March 2024, but fell to 49% in the year ending March 2025.

Commenting on these figures, Louise Calvey, executive director at Asylum Matters, a charity, said this means refusal rates are “extremely high”. She went on:

The problem becomes extremely clear once you dig into the figures: for example, we’ve seen over 4,000 refusals of Afghan nationals in the last six months under this government, up from just over 700 in the last six months. People fleeing from a country that is quite clearly unsafe, with obvious protection needs, are being refused at huge rates.

The government appears to be trying to clear the backlog with fast refusals, but when almost half of refused claims are granted on appeal, it seems shoddy and rushed decision making is leaving people who could be getting on with rebuilding their lives trapped in limbo, banned from working, often trapped in hotels, while simply shifting the backlog figures into a different column on a spreadsheet.

Asylum claims hit record high of 109,000 in year ending March 2025, Home Office figures show

Asylum claims were at a record level in the year ending March 2025, reaching 109,000, according to Home Office figures published today.

The Home Office says:

-109,000 people claimed asylum in the year ending March 2025, relating to 85,000 cases, 17% more than in the year ending March 2024 and higher than the previous recorded peak of 103,000 in 2002

-the number of people claiming asylum has almost doubled since 2021

-in 2024, just under a third of asylum seekers had arrived in the UK on a small boat and slightly more than a third had travelled to the UK on a visa

-in 2024 the UK received the fifth largest number of asylum seekers in the EU+, after Germany, Spain, Italy and France

Asylum figures Photograph: Home Office

Tories says it is ‘outrageous’ ministers won’t reveal teachers pay award figure to MPs this morning, but will publish it later

Catherine McKinnell, an education minister, has told MPs that the government will announce the pay award for teachers in England this afternoon. It will be announced in the form of a written statement. McKinnell said:

This afternoon we will announce the teachers pay award, which will be the earliest announcement for a decade, because we understand the importance of giving schools certainty, giving them time to plan their budgets and ensuring they can recruit and retain the expert teachers our children need. The secretary of state’s written ministerial statement will be coming out this afternoon.

She was responding to an urgent question tabled by the shadow education secretary, Laura Trott, who said it was “outrageous” that ministers were not willing to reveal the pay award figure in the chamber this morning. She said:

This is absolutely outrageous. It is astonishing that we’ve had to summon the government to the benches today and they can’t even tell us what pay rise they’re going to get and whether it’s going to be funded. That is not allowing us to scrutinise this in this house.

All of this in the final two weeks that headteachers up and down the country have to decide whether to make teachers redundant in time for September. In fact, sadly, many schools will have already made a difficult decision to let good teachers go. These are job losses on her watch due to her inability to provide schools with the clarity that they need.

Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, has posted a message on social media claiming that the injunction blocking the Chagos Islands deal is a “humiliation” for Keir Starmer.

Labour’s Chagos Surrender Deal is bad for our defence and security interests, bad for British taxpayers and bad for British Chagossians. Today’s legal intervention is a humiliation for Keir Starmer and David Lammy.

High court starts hearing over injunction blocking Chagos Islands deal

A high court hearing over a last-minute block on the government from concluding its deal on the Chagos Islands has begun, PA Media reports. PA says the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, before Mr Justice Chamberlain, began shortly after 10.35am. The hearing comes after an injunction was granted by a different judge at 2.25am.

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has posted a message on social media condemning the killing of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington. He said:

Horrified by the killing of two Israeli Embassy staff in DC.

We condemn this appalling, antisemitic crime.

Our thoughts are with the victims, their families and colleagues at this awful time.

Tories must ‘get moving’ on new policies or face crisis, says Robert Jenrick

The Conservative party needs to “get moving” with new policies or risk being cut adrift in a social media-informed world where people make up their minds quickly, Robert Jenrick has said. Peter Walker has the story.

How SNP using WFPs issue in Hamilton byelection, where Labour worries about coming 3rd behind Reform

Libby Brooks

Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.

Keir Starmer as yet unspecified U-turn on winter fuel payment (WFP) came on the same day at the Scottish Labour candidate for the crucial Hamilton byelection admitted that the issue was coming up regularly on the doorstep and two days after first minister and SNP leader John Swinney confirmed that a universal pension age winter heating payment of at least £100 will be introduced for Scottish pensioners from St Andrew’s day, 30 November.

In Scotland, the winter fuel payment was replaced with the pension age winter heating payment (PAWHP) last year, as part of the devolution of welfare powers, and the Scottish government announced it would reintroduce universal payments last November, in a bid to outstrip Labour ahead of the Holyrood elections.

Under the Scottish government’s plans for the winter, every pensioner household will receive £100, and some will receive £200 or £300 depending on their age and means, with around one million pensioners are expected to benefit.

Labour canvassers in Hamilton – where there is panic that the party might be pushed into third place by Reform – says that winter fuel is coming up constantly with voters angry at Starmer and Rachel Reeves as they struggle to get traction on more local issues.

This morning on BBC Radio Scotland, the Scottish government’s social justice secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said:

Pensioners elsewhere in the UK are still worrying about whether they’re going to get this winter fuel payment or not, while Scotland’s pensioners don’t have to.”

Your payments will arrive because the Scottish government already stepped in and we didn’t wait for Labour to flip-flop and finally change its mind.

She added that her government was still waiting to see the details of the announcement and who it will apply to before confirming where the Barnet consequentials from it will go.

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