IPP Sentences

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered imprisonment for public protection sentences.

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. Imprisonment for public protection sentences, which were introduced in 2005 by the Criminal Justice Act 2003, are cruel, unjust and damaging to those who are still serving them. They were meant to be used to protect the public against criminals who had committed one of 96 offences and who were thought still to be a danger after the minimum term or tariff of the original sentence had expired. No level was set for that tariff by the legislation and the open-ended nature of the sentences led to some catastrophic results.

The House of Commons Library, in its excellent briefing paper for this debate, noted one instance where the courts applied an IPP sentence to someone who had served a minimum term of just 28 days. The misapplication of, and erroneous logic behind, IPP sentences resulted in widespread criticism and to the Government being challenged in court over restrictions on ways that IPP prisoners could demonstrate that they were no danger to the public.

Following a joint report from His Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons and HM inspectorate of probation that highlighted the low levels of IPP prisoners being released, as well as the unsustainability of IPP prisoners adding to the burgeoning prison population, a ministerial review was carried out. Eventually, after further court cases and public pressure, IPP sentences were abolished on 3 December 2012. By then, more than 6,000 prisoners had received IPP sentences. Fast-forwarding to the present day, according to Ministry of Justice statistics as of June this year there were 1,132 IPP prisoners who had never been released, and a further 1,602 who had been recalled for breaching their licence conditions, making a total of 2,734 IPP prisoners still in our prisons.

Criticism of IPP sentences has come from far and wide. In August of this year, Dr Alice Jill Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said:

“IPP sentences are inhuman treatment and, in many cases, amount to psychological torture.”

Former Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas described them as “morally wrong” and “inherently unfair”. Even Lord Blunkett, who was Home Secretary when IPP sentences were brought in, described their introduction as “the biggest regret” of his political career, which in some cases had led to injustice.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Did the hon. Gentleman hear Lord Blunkett on the media today saying that one of the alternative options should be secure therapeutic units?

[Bambos Charalambous]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention. She is right, and one of the biggest impacts of IPP sentences is on the mental health of prisoners. I will come to that later. She makes a good point with which I agree.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing this important debate. I want to raise the case of my constituent whose son is serving an indefinite IPP sentence and suffers from long-term psychiatric conditions. She feels he is in the wrong institution, unable to access the specialist support he urgently needs. Does my hon. Friend agree that such cases underline the urgent need for a review of IPP sentences, particularly given the crisis in overcrowded prisons?

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend is right. There is a special need for prisoners to receive support. Keeping IPP prisoners incarcerated for longer than they should be is adding further pressure on our already overcrowded prison population.

In a recent written response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), the Minister confirmed that there are still five serving IPP prisoners who were given a minimum term of less than six months but have served more than 16 years. There are a further 15 with a tariff of between six months and a year who have not been released after 16 years. There are in a further 47 in the same position whose tariff was between a year and 18 months.

Among the 1,132 IPP prisoners who have never been released is one of my constituents. Ongoing legal proceedings preclude me from naming him, although I can say that in 2006 he was sentenced to serve a minimum of 10 years for robbery under an IPP plan but has now served 19 years. He is now 42 years old and has missed the funeral of his grandfather, along with countless other family occasions. That has had a serious impact on him and his family.

The psychological harm experienced by IPP prisoners and their families has been well documented by the British Psychological Society, which refers to the heightened risk of self-harm and suicide that IPP prisoners face as a result of their hopelessness and their perpetual state of anxiety at the prospect of additional years in prison. The deterioration of IPP prisoners’ mental health is illustrated by the Royal College of Psychiatrists case study in which a 17-year-old was given an IPP sentence for street robbery of trainers and given a one-year tariff but spent 10 years in prison, during which time he lost both his living relatives: his mother and grandmother. His mental health deteriorated so badly that he had to be transferred to a secure NHS mental hospital.

Having spoken to some of the family members of people currently serving IPP sentences—I met them at lunchtime today, and many are in the Public Gallery—I have heard at first hand about the impact that this unbearable situation has on family members, but the impact on IPP prisoners is far more profound. According to the United Group for Reform of IPP, or UNGRIPP, which is campaigning to bring about change to IPP sentences, 90 IPP prisoners have committed suicide since the sentences were introduced, with nine of those suicides occurring in 2023. Considering that the prison population last year was approximately 87,000 and IPP prisoners were only 3% of that total, it is staggering that IPP prisoners accounted for 10% of all self-inflicted deaths in prison in 2023.

One example is the tragic suicide of Scott Rider in 2022. In 2005, he had been sentenced to an IPP sentence, with a minimum tariff of 23 months. Seventeen years later, he was still in prison. He was one of the longest serving IPP prisoners at the time of his death. Following a three-day inquest into his death, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes, Tom Osborne, said in his regulation 28 report to prevent future deaths:

“On any consideration of the circumstances of Mr Rider’s death one has to conclude that his treatment was inhumane and indefensible and that if action is not taken to review all prisoners sentenced to IPP then there is a risk of further deaths occurring.”

He added:

“Mr Rider was one of many IPP prisoners struggling to progress”

and, at the time of his death, he had served 17.5 years and had

“given up all hope of release.”

The loss of hope of ever being released is certainly one of the big factors behind the high levels of suicide and self-harm among IPP prisoners. Even when IPP prisoners have been released on licence, the draconian licence conditions have led to prisoners being recalled for minor breaches of their licence, such as being late or missing an appointment. As I have mentioned, there are currently 1,602 IPP prisoners who have been released on licence but recalled.

I am sure that we all agree that the current situation cannot continue, so what is to be done? In September 2022, in its excellent report on IPP sentences, the Justice Committee, chaired by Sir Bob Neill, made several recommendations to remedy the damage done by the sentences. The three main recommendations can be summarised as follows. No. 1 involves a refreshed action plan for IPP sentences, better access to prison programmes to help IPP prisoners to progress and better support for prisoners who are suffering with their mental health because of these sentences. No. 2 involves better training for Parole Board members overseeing IPP prisoners’ parole hearings, more support for IPP prisoners in preparing for parole hearings, a reduction of the qualifying licence period and better support for prison leavers. No. 3 is resentencing. In paragraph 152 of its report, the Justice Committee said:

“Our primary recommendation is that the Government brings forward legislation to enable a resentencing exercise in relation to all IPP sentenced individuals…This is the only way to address the unique injustice caused by the IPP sentence and its subsequent administration, and to restore proportionality to the original sentences that were given.”

The Committee also noted that there is precedent for resentencing retrospectively, but that it would require primary legislation. Former Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas emphasised his support for this approach.

I acknowledge the steps that this Government and the previous Government have taken to tackle some of the problems caused by the licence conditions of IPP sentences. Particularly of note is section 66 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, which creates an automatic termination process for IPP licences in certain circumstances, starting from this Friday, 1 November. At lunchtime, I had the pleasure of meeting a former IPP prisoner who will benefit from this measure, which means that he will no longer be on an IPP licence and will be able to be at large freely. The Act also allows for reviews by the Parole Board in certain circumstances from 1 February 2025.

However, resentencing would be the most effective way to deal with the legacy of IPP sentences. I am aware that it is not without its problems, but it is the only just and fair way to deal with this appalling situation, which, if left unresolved, will lead to more IPP prisoners self-harming and taking their own lives.

Prior to this debate, some of the IPP reform campaigners met Lord Woodley to discuss his private Member’s Bill on resentencing IPP prisoners, which reflects the Justice Committee’s recommendations on the matter. I hope Ministers will meet Lord Woodley to discuss his proposals, because there needs to be a review of IPP sentences, and all options need to be considered.

Will my hon. Friend the Minister advise me on what steps the Government are taking to reduce the number of IPP prisoners in our prisons? What support mechanisms have been put in place to help IPP prisoners who are struggling with their mental health, including those who have been institutionalised, to help them overcome the barriers that may adversely affect their parole hearings and to prepare them for a return to life outside prison? Will the Government reconsider their position on resentencing IPP prisoners? At a stroke, that would rectify this injustice once and for all. Will the Government at least carry out a review to see what the barriers to resentencing are? That is the one thing that all commentators think needs to be done to resolve the injustice caused by IPP sentences.

I thank UNGRIPP, the Howard League—which runs an excellent advice line for family members of IPP prisoners —the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Psychological Society. I also thank the House of Commons Library for its excellent briefings ahead of the debate. Most important are the family and friends of IPP prisoners who are incarcerated and those who have endured IPP sentences. Finally, there are those who unfortunately bow to the pressure of hopelessness, as there is no end to their sentences in sight, and, sadly, end their lives in prison. I hope that change will come and that IPP sentences will finally be gotten rid of from our prisons and confined to the dustbin of history, where they belong.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

I expect to call the Lib Dem spokesperson at 3.28 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bambos Charalambous]

I also thank colleagues who have taken part in the debate, which has been thorough and thoughtful. There have been great contributions from everybody. I also have an apology from the Justice Committee, which is in its first meeting right now so its members could not be present, but would have liked to attend, so we would have had more voices around this Chamber.

I welcome many of the comments made by the Minister, particularly those about the action plan and the dashboard for prisoners. They need to know what is happening, so I welcome that. I also welcome the fact that they need to be in the correct prisons in order to progress and the fact that they will have dedicated time to see support workers and get the right education and training to be released. I look forward to seeing the action plan when it is republished, and I am keen to see what progress it makes, because we want to see progress and ensure that IPP prisoners are no longer suffering and are able to get on with their lives. It impacts not just them, but their families. If this does not work, I certainly think we need to revisit the resentencing option.

One point made by numerous Members in the debate was about the recommendations of the Justice Committee, which talked about having an “expert committee”. It is about looking at and resentencing each individual case, which would be very time-consuming, but the right and just thing to do. We will see where we go, and we will monitor the progress made on this by the Government. If progress has not been made, we will come back and seek to look at other alternatives, but I welcome the measures put in place so far.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered imprisonment for public protection sentences.

Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

On the 37 who were wrongly released, I had never imagined that it would be possible for people to be charged and sentenced under an older Act of Parliament, and not the more recent Sentencing Act 2020, and as soon as that issue was brought to our attention we took immediate steps. All 37 were ultimately returned to custody, and I will ensure that that mistake cannot happen again. The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about reducing reoffending. Access to literacy training and skills and the ability to get a job are important in helping an offender turn their back on a life of crime, and I hope the sentencing review will make further positive suggestions on that. We know we have to tackle reoffending, and we know that jobs, housing and so on are part of the picture if we are to persuade people to become the better citizens that we need them to be, rather than the better criminals that our system currently produces.

[Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s review of sentencing, but as she may know, people who are neurodivergent are hugely over-represented in the prison population. What steps will she take to ensure that prisoners with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism do not reoffend?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the support prisoners receive in prison must be tailored to take account of needs such as neurodivergence and autism, much of which has gone undiagnosed in the life of prisoners, and often does not even get diagnosed within the prison estate. We must obviously turn that around, and I am confident we can make progress in that area. First we have to deal with the capacity crisis, because when prisons are very overcrowded offenders are locked up for 23 hours a day, and in that one remaining hour little good work can be done. We must deal with the capacity problems so that we can then deal with the underlying issues that prisoners face before they can make the positive choices that we all want.

Criminal Law

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your election and welcome you to your place as Deputy Speaker.

I welcome this motion from my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, who is taking the only realistic action open to her to deal with the critical issue of prison capacity, with our prisons projected to be overflowing by September. This is another failure by the former Conservative Government, the result of their continuously kicking the can down the road, rather than dealing with the issues at hand.

The current situation cannot come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the developments in criminal justice over the past 14 years. Prior to the election being called, I had the pleasure of serving for a second time on the Justice Committee, and on 22 May this year, in one of his last statements as Chair of the Committee, Sir Bob Neill KC said that

“Prisons are simply running out of space. My committee has long since warned of the dangers of successive Governments ignoring the rise in jail numbers, set against a workforce recruitment and retention crisis and a crumbling Victorian prison estate. Ministers and society must be prepared to invest in prison capacity and proper rehabilitation programmes as the current situation is unsustainable”.

That is the Conservative former Chair of the Justice Committee speaking. The warning signs were there a long time ago, but the failure to invest has meant that we are now reaping this bitter harvest. I welcome the prison building programme and the renewal programme mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, but in addition to the measures proposed in this motion, I would like to suggest some further measures that may reduce the prison population over a longer term.

The first measure is addressing court delays. In its report “Reducing the backlog in the Crown Court”, published in May this year, the National Audit Office found that at the end of December 2023, the outstanding Crown court caseload was 65,573, and 18,000 of those cases had been outstanding for a year or more. It also found that it took an average of 683 days from offence to completion of a case in the Crown court, and that a staggering 16,005 people were on remand as of the end of December 2023. One third were awaiting sentencing, and the remaining two thirds were awaiting trial. The remand population is the highest it has been in over 50 years. Those figures are truly shocking, and the issue of remand prisoners needs to be addressed urgently. The maxim that justice delayed is justice denied is certainly apt, and we should remember that delays in cases going to trial also have adverse impacts on the victims and witnesses.

One of the causes of the delay is a shortage of criminal barristers and duty solicitors, whose numbers have been in decline since 2018. In part, that has been due to a serious under-investment in our criminal justice system over the past two decades. I hope that we will soon see the investment we need in the criminal justice system from this Government. On court dates and the listing of trials, I very much hope that His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service gets smarter in how it uses time and space for court hearings.

The second point I wish to make is about reoffending, an issue that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has touched on. According the Ministry of Justice’s own figures from the last quarter for which stats are available, 33.4% of adults released from custody will go on to reoffend. That figure is way too high. As reoffending is so high, it should come as no surprise that a large number of people are being remanded for non-violent offences due to their repeat offending. Many of those repeat offenders will have underlying vulnerabilities, such as drug abuse, homelessness and mental health issues, which will not have been properly addressed. Unless there is a co-ordinated approach to tackling the causes of reoffending, we will see this endless revolving-door cycle in our criminal justice system that gives courts no option but to remand repeat offenders into custody. I know that my right hon. Friend is serious about taking action to address those issues, and I ask her to co-ordinate work with other Departments to help stop reoffending.

The final point I wish to focus on is imprisonment for public protection prisoners, who account for approximately 3,000 of the prisoners in our prisons. In its report on IPP prisoners, the Justice Committee said that

“Our primary recommendation is that the Government brings forward legislation to enable a resentencing exercise in relation to all IPP sentenced individuals…This is the only way to address the unique injustice caused by the IPP sentence and its subsequent administration, and to restore proportionality to the original sentences that were given.”

On previous occasions, I have made the point that dealing with IPP prisoners who have spent more time in prison than they should have would not only help reduce the prison population, but would right a wrong.

In conclusion, I very much welcome this motion as a short-term measure to deal with the overcrowding in our prisons. I also welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to an annual prison capacity statement, which will allow us to see what effect this measure and other measures have on the prison population. In addition to building more prisons, we need an investment in our criminal justice system, and greater recruitment and retention of barristers, solicitors, prison officers and probation officers. I was delighted to hear that my right hon. Friend has committed to recruiting 1,000 more probation officers. That will certainly help to address issues that arise among people who are on licence after serving half of their sentence. We need to clear the backlog of cases in the Crown court to allow remand prisoners to be dealt with sooner, and we also need to address the root causes of both offending and reoffending. Finally, we need to deal with IPP prisoners, and see what can be done to release those who are over tariff.

I hope that the motion will pass today; it is a very good start to tackling the Gordian knot that we face. Still more work needs to be done, but I have every confidence that the Lord Chancellor and her team will deliver.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Prison Capacity

Bambos Charalambous Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I welcome the shadow Lord Chancellor to his place; we have always worked constructively together wherever appropriate, and I look forward to continuing to do so while he is in post. He made a heroic attempt to gloss over many years of failure in planning by the previous Government. I was surprised that he managed to say it all with a straight face. He knows full well that for many years the previous Government struggled to get such measures past many of their Back-Benchers, not all of whom have returned post the general election, but some of whom remain here, and remain implacable opponents of any kind of planning developments in their constituency. They think that national infrastructure is a good thing as long as it is elsewhere. I look forward to seeing whether there is a change of heart among those on the Opposition Benches. It would be welcome, because this Government will not allow the planning system to prevent our country from having either the prison places or the national infrastructure that we so desperately need. He also knows full well that of the 20,000 places that were supposed to have been provided by the previous Government by 2025, only 6,000 have been delivered.

I am concerned about the position relating to prisoners on remand. The shadow Lord Chancellor rightly notes that the number of those on remand in our prison estate is around 16,000. Of course, judges need to be able to remand people to prison for public protection reasons. That will not change. He will know, given his former role in the Department, that there are no immediate solutions, because many of those individuals will in the end be sentenced to custody. I am considering all options available to me for driving that number down as much as possible. In the end, we will need our 10-year capacity plan to take account of what we expect the sentenced population to look like.

On the sentences that are covered by this measure, the shadow Lord Chancellor will know that in order to make a change by means of a statutory instrument, it has to relate to specific offences. That is why we have taken every precaution and every option available to us to exclude sentences connected to domestic abuse. He knows that those will include—I am sure that he has seen the draft statutory instrument—offences related to the breaching of a non-molestation order; stalking, which I mentioned in my statement, including stalking involving the fear of violence, serious alarm or distress; strangulation or suffocation; controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship; the breaching of a restraining order; and a breach of a domestic abuse protection order. The common offences that we know are connected to domestic abuse are caught in the statutory instrument. On multiple and repeat offences, he will know that the decision relies on the combination that is reviewed when the sentencing calculation is done.

As I said in my statement, I will return in 18 months to update the House. We want to remove this temporary measure as quickly as possible, and we will be transparent throughout. The shadow Lord Chancellor will not need to chase me around this building trying to find out what is happening, as I had to when I was in his position and we were considering the previous Government’s early release scheme. We will be transparent in a way that the previous Government simply were not. We will do a quarterly release of all the data, and we will update the House regularly.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman followed the announcement on Friday closely, so he will know that the announcement on probation does not involve new money. It is a re-prioritisation of resources, because strengthening probation to make sure that it is in the strongest possible position to deal with the early release scheme is incredibly important to us.

On Dartmoor, the right hon. Gentleman knows the history very well. Safety is our No. 1 priority, and after close monitoring of the situation at HMP Dartmoor, it has been decided that prison will be temporarily closed. I will update the House as the situation develops. I say to him gently that we have committed to a 10-year capacity strategy. We recognise that we need to make sure that this country has the prison places that it needs. We will deliver where the previous Government failed, and we will never allow the planning process to get in the way of having the prisons that we need in this country.

Longer term, however, we will also look at driving down reoffending, because the entrenched cycle of reoffending creates more victims and more crime, and it has big impacts on our ability to have the capacity that we need in our prison estate. That is why this Government will make it a key priority to drive down reoffending. That is a strategy for creating better citizens, not better criminals. It is a strategy for cutting crime, and in the long term, it will deal with our capacity problems for years to come.

[Bambos Charalambous (Southgate and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place on the Government Front Bench. The imprisonment for public protection prison population is more than 2,700; 99% of those people are over tariff, and more than 700 prisoners are now 10 years over their original tariff. Can she accelerate the Ministry of Justice’s refreshed IPP action plan to help to reduce the prison population and right that wrong?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The situation with IPP prisoners is of great concern, and I know that huge numbers of Members on both sides of this House care about it deeply. I share that concern. IPP prisoners are not caught in the changes that we are putting forward; those are indeterminate sentences, not standard determinate sentences. We supported the previous Government in what we thought were sensible changes to the licence period and the action plan, and we will continue that work. However, any changes made have to account for public protection risks, first and foremost. We want to make progress with that cohort of prisoners, but not in a way that impacts public protection.