Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for his comments and endorse everything that he said, particularly about the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who we all wish was here today. I will address one or two of the pragmatic issues. The amendments in this group all relate to IPP licences, and I support them all. They are intended to affect the applications of licences to be fairer and speedier, so that we can release or re-release IPPs as fast and as safely as possible into the community.

Clause 48 currently removes the element of annual review in favour of one-off review every three years. However, if the Parole Board decides not to terminate the licence of this point, Amendments 149 and 150 restore the right—removed by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act—to an annual review by the Parole Board. The Prison Reform Trust comments that having a sunset clause of a further two years might just constitute a high bar for some prisoners, and that the Parole Board should be able to terminate the licence after one year, otherwise licences could drag on for years, as before.

The circumstances described in Amendment 152 are probably quite rare, but it is worth ensuring that a person would not have to suffer if they had been recalled but the Secretary of State had revoked the recall, presumably because there had been an error of some kind and they should not have been recalled. The prisoner should not be penalised because of an error not of their making.

Amendment 153 continues in a similar vein, but this time gives the Parole Board the ability to maintain the sunset clause. However, in this case, it is slightly more complicated. Firstly, the Secretary of State can recall if they conclude on reasonable grounds that the prisoner has deliberately revoked the terms of their licence and the safety of the public would be at risk. The Parole Board can overturn the Secretary of State’s decision to recall a prisoner if on subsequent review, and if it is privy to more information than the Secretary of State, it subsequently concludes that the prisoner is not putting the public at risk.

Amendment 157 ensures that the Government use their wide-ranging powers to change the qualifying period using only secondary legislation and that they can revise it only downwards. If they want to revise it upwards, it will have to be done with primary legislation. This is within the spirit of the Bill today. This amendment ensures that a future Government would not be tempted to use this power to make the situation worse for IPP prisoners, not better.

All in all, this suite of amendments is sensible and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, pragmatic. It is offered in a spirit of helpfulness. I sincerely hope that the Minister will see this and maybe feel that it is appropriate to introduce government amendments to this effect.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise possibly as an elder, owing to my advanced age; but perhaps not. I would like to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. As he said, there is almost nothing left to say about these prisoners. It is an injustice. I hope that the Government are considering accepting some of these amendments. We cannot say that we have a justice system if we have an innate injustice like this.

I support the tributes to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, but also to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, with whom I have almost nothing in common; we have a very tetchy relationship but, on this, I think he is being superlative in working for the rights of IPP prisoners.

As Greens, we believe that prison is overused as a tool of justice. Far too many people are imprisoned when there are much more effective ways of rehabilitation or stopping reoffending. I can understand the anger of people who say that we should lock up serial rapists and murderers and throw away the key. I do understand that anger; but, in this instance, we have, for example, a 17 year-old who steals a bike, or people who grab other people’s mobile phones. This is clearly an injustice; I find it difficult to believe that anybody listening to this would not agree.

The lawyer and campaigner Peter Stefanovic put out an online video about this. It has had 14 million views. A petition to force the Government to debate this again got easily 10,000 signatures. There is massive public support for sorting out this issue. I know that the Government care very much about the will of the British public. The word that came through for me in some of the responses to the video was “cruel”. The sentencing and continued imprisonment of IPP prisoners has just been cruel. Please, let us see some progress on this Bill, then we can all take the Ministers out for a cup of tea.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for moving his amendment. I have tabled Amendment 156; it may be convenient to speak to it now. Before doing so, I have some general points to make about the whole issue of IPP, which I will not repeat in detail later.

I am grateful for all the work that my noble friend Lord Moylan has done along with the Prison Reform Trust and UNGRIPP. In 2017, as a result of a debate initiated by the late noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood—I am grateful for the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti —I decided to take a very close look at our penal system. I soon found that I needed to widen my interest to the whole of the criminal justice system because there is so much is wrong with it. One obvious example is joint enterprise murder, but that is for another day.

Let no one think that I am some sort of soft, bleeding heart, out-of-touch do-gooder. I am not. I believe in firm discipline, with all that that implies. But—I repeat, but—no more disciplinary sanctions should be applied, including incarceration, than are needed to have the desired, legitimate effects of protecting the public by incapacitation, and providing retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. The current IPP regime clearly fails this test on all counts. I will not rehearse the heart-rending histories that we have all heard about. They are not in dispute.

I also accept that some prisoners on an IPP sentence may not be releasable any time soon even under a resentencing scheme. However, keeping prisoners incarcerated unnecessarily costs £44,000 per annum per prisoner and wastes resources. We know we have a terrible prison system because the Chief Inspector of Prisons tell us that is so. In his 2023 report, he said that inspectors have run out of superlatives to describe how poor the purposeful activity component of prison life is, or words to that effect. No wonder IPP prisoners find it so hard to demonstrate any progress with rehabilitation.