Imprisonment for Public Protection Prisoners

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for all his continued support in this difficult area and for sending me a lot of cases that I can look at. The good news is that recall is down by 31%. Under the risk-assessed recall review, which is a specialist review where we can quickly release someone quickly, we had released 50 prisoners early up to September 2025—in the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing the updated figures, and I hope for that figure to be higher. We also have the round table of the Peers’ IPP group on 20 July, which I am really looking forward to, because we can go into this in more detail then.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister, whose personal commitment is not in doubt on this issue, tell us why the Government continue to reject a significant proportion of recommendations by the Parole Board for the transfer of IPP prisoners to open conditions? In answering that question, perhaps he will help me answer a mother who has written to me and whose son is an IPP prisoner. He was given a six-year sentence and has now served 18 years. She says: “He is 50 this year. I fear I will not see him liberated and free before I die”. She wants transfer to an open prison, because most of these prisoners are too traumatised and too mentally incapacitated to undertake the action plans.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am a big fan of open prisons. That is where the best recruitment is and that is where people reintegrate into society a lot more. I was in HMP Birmingham three weeks ago, where I met an IPP prisoner who had been to open conditions for the first time and then had asked to come back because he did not feel ready, so it is a good way of testing people on their journey. I would like to do more, but this comes back to the point that we want our prisons to be working well and then they have the time to really support people on that transition. However, we have to protect the public and we have to make sure that people are ready.