Imprisonment for Public Protection Action Plan

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

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

My Lords, it is a privilege as ever to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. There is so much one could say in this debate and so little time to say it. I shall focus solely on the burden of proof. This is far from just a snapping up of unconsidered trifles; it is really important.

We all know that the injustices of the IPP regime have long since reached scandal or crisis levels, but we all know too the political difficulties confronting a Minister newly in post who is facing an election next year where both main parties appear to be vying to be toughest on law and order. I fully support the projected resentencing proposal in the Commons report, but meantime, and altogether less politically problematic, we should recall that over 10 years after Section 128 of LASPO was included precisely for this situation, it remains unused. Surely at the very least a Section 128 ministerial order should now be made, at last reversing the burden of proof as to future dangerousness when the Parole Board considers release.

This would have several benefits. First, it would be easier for the Minister to introduce such an order than having to promote primary legislation. Secondly, it would counteract the Parole Board’s present risk-averse approach, encouraged—indeed, recently required—by Mr Raab’s insistence on supposed “public protection” at the expense of all else. With the burden reversed—a burden repeatedly said by Ken Clarke, Matthew Parris and others to be effectively impossible for the prisoner to discharge—the Parole Board need not be so defensive. If an IPP prisoner were to reoffend after release, the board would simply point out that the evidence of serious future risk relied on by the department was insufficient to justify further detention.

Thirdly, under this proposal there would be no question of sudden multiple releases. The new approach would take effect as and when individual IPP prisoners come up for Parole Board review. This consideration, too, should help the Minister. I urge our new Secretary of State for Justice to go at least this far as soon as possible.

As I have a moment left of my time, I will use it to urge the new Minister, of whom I hear nothing but good, to focus yet further on the immense and still-growing iniquities of the whole IPP scheme. These I believe to be incurable simply by improving yet again earlier versions of the action plan. The Minister must do what Sir Robert Neill and his committee urged last year.