Imprisonment for Public Protection Scheme

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, that was a masterly introduction to this debate, and I am honoured to follow it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, says, this report is to be welcomed greatly.

Your Lordships’ House has long recognised the shocking injustices suffered by all those sentenced under this scheme—injustices continuing and growing 10 years after its abolition. We have hitherto been given to understand that the other place, the all-powerful elected Chamber, is unpersuadable; we have been told they do not have the appetite to change the law in a way which could put at liberty some who could reoffend and who are currently—however unfairly and most of us regard it thus—lawfully locked up.

This House of Commons report is not so hard-hearted, but nor is it soft-hearted; rather, it is hard-headed. It contains a masterly analysis of the wrong and what is necessary to put it right within the system. At last, it is recognised that the scheme has resulted in a gross injustice. IPP sentences are effectively life sentences by the back door. The committee describes it as “preventive detention”, imprisoning people

“on the basis of what they might do, rather than on the basis of what they have done.”

As the committee recognises, the only actual, long-term, final solution is for those still affected to be resentenced according to just principles.

Of course, everybody ever sentenced to an IPP sentence—between April 2005 and December 2012, until its prospective abolition under LASPO—is still subject to this injustice; not only those still detained, many for years beyond tariff dates and several beyond the statutory maximum for their offence, but everybody. That is a total of 8,711 IPPs, the only exceptions being the tiny handful who have finally secured the discharge of their licences by definition, 10 years after their initial release. All these are to be regarded as victims of an unjust scheme, who desperately need far greater help than most have been getting in order to secure and then retain, at long last, their liberty. As the committee recognises, what is needed now is an intensive, well-resourced, new scheme, custom built to maximise the prospect of safe and sustainable release for this whole cohort of our unfortunate fellow citizens. The report points the way ahead.