Imprisonment for Public Protection

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, the Government accept that there are certain special mental health issues for a number of these prisoners. They are being tackled, as far as we can do so, within the existing system. The action plan to which I referred contains provisions in that regard, particularly on improving psychological services and providing better support for prisoners on licence to avoid later recall. I do not accept the second part of my noble friend’s question that it follows that we need special legislation to deal with this.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, we must all be so grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his continued campaigning on this issue, and we are grateful to the Government for responding at such length to the rapporteur. If everything in the IPP garden is so rosy in relation to indeterminately detained people, some of whom would have got a sentence of only months for their actual crime, why did the Government abolish this sentence in the first place, and why did the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, as late as 2016 call the threshold that prisoners have to meet to secure their release both ridiculous and absurd?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I do not assert that everything in the garden is rosy. This area is one of the acute—perhaps the most acute—dilemmas faced by the Ministry of Justice. Your Lordships will be aware that the subject of IPP prisoners is being addressed in Part 4 of the Victims and Prisoners Bill currently before Parliament, which we will shortly discuss in detail in Committee, and I am meeting noble Lords on Thursday to take that discussion further.