IPP Prisoners: Recall System

Debate between Lord Garnier and Lord Lemos

Wednesday 16th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the recall system for prisoners released on licence serving indeterminate sentences for public protection.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Lord Chancellor has announced that we will bring forward legislation to end the IPP sentence once and for all by the end of this Parliament. In the meantime, HMPPS has strengthened safeguards around recall decisions, improved quality assurance, streamlined recall processes and expanded the use of risk-assessed recall reviews to support swifter re-releases where it is safe to do so.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, it was interesting to hear what the Minister had to say. Earlier this year, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and I studied about 80 sets of IPP recall papers, provided to us by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. Many of the decisions were poorly reasoned or plainly irrational and had nothing to do with public safety. Does the Minister agree that recall should not be used lazily and defensively and only when it is in the interests of justice?

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

Of course, recall should be used the interests of justice and not lazily, but I have to say to the noble and learned Lord that recall remains a vital public protection measure and that safeguards and oversight have been strengthened for IPP cases, partly as a result of his work. There has been a 31% decrease in IPP recalls in 2025 compared with 2024. All IPP licence recall decisions are now agreed by senior HMPPS decision-makers precisely to mitigate the point that the noble and learned Lord makes.

Criminal Justice Reform

Debate between Lord Garnier and Lord Lemos

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest. I was the lead non-executive director and chaired the agency board of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service until March 2025. Last week the Lord Chancellor set out in the other place changes to the implementation of the Sentencing Act 2026 to strike a better balance between protecting prison capacity and protecting the public from dangerous offenders. As the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, indicated, the Government recognise the uncertainty that victims have faced over the summer. When they are told that an offender may be released earlier than they expected, I have no doubt at all that it can be extremely distressing. I will say bit more about how we propose to support, and are already supporting, victims in a moment.

Victim liaison officers will be engaging directly with victims opted in to the victim contact scheme, which this Government have expanded in recent legislation, so that they understand how their individual cases are affected. We are also attempting to trace victims who are not in the scheme. This is backed by £18.9 million for victim support, including a dedicated helpline and specialist support for victims of violence against women and girls. The Government recognise that victims’ concerns are increased by uncertainty. The whole purpose of making these changes to the exemptions is because we have listened to victims. That is the basis on which we are proposing to make these changes. It is why the Government were determined to look again at these changes, which never applied to some of the most serious violent and sexual offences or life sentences.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that of course I remember the debates on the Sentencing Bill. I was here throughout. I suppose I will not be the first or the last Minister to say that we are doing something different from the things I objected to in the past. We have now, rightly, also excluded rape, serious child sex and grooming offences, manslaughter, other unlawful killing offences, and indecent assault, which had been used to prosecute historic child sex abuse. We acknowledge the public concern. That is why the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor have initiated these changes and that is why we have made the announcement. We have listened to victims—that is why we are doing these things—and we want to continue to do that.

On the point that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, made about commencement, the Act has already been commenced. Primary legislation is not needed in the short term, but we will pursue it when parliamentary time allows. We must, however, continue to be honest about why these reforms were introduced. When we took office in 2024, prisons were regularly at 99% of their capacity. Running out of places risked paralysing the criminal justice system and we acted to avert that crisis, but prisons continue to operate near their limit.

I have been involved with the subject for many years now. This is not a new problem. This goes back to 2022. I have discussed it—

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

It goes back beyond that.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

Yes, it goes back beyond that, but the intensity has not gone away. The answer cannot be a succession of emergency measures. The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, said the Government had introduced various emergency measures. Well, we needed to, because the previous Government refused to act. Parliament legislated through the Sentencing Act for a sustainable model in which some offenders spend less of their sentence in custody, depending on their behaviour, before continuing to serve their sentence under intensive supervision in the community.

Much of the debate about the changes we are making to the Sentencing Act has simply not taken account of the changes we are making in the supervision arrangements. I am happy to say more if noble Lords want to ask me, but it is a different proposition that is now being proposed for the second third of the earned progression model by probation staff. Probation staff do an extraordinarily difficult job protecting the public, and I want to pay tribute to them. It is easy to be critical of both prison and probation staff, but I regard them as heroic and doing jobs that many of us would find almost unconscionable.

Working closely with the police, we have given them a much more robust range of measures to manage offenders outside prison, and we are building a very different Probation Service. These measures can include curfews, exclusion zones and, for the most serious sexual and violent offenders, new restriction zones, which will tightly constrain their movements, with serious breaches of these conditions potentially resulting in recall to prison. The purpose of probation, as we are now conceiving and structuring it, is about controlling people’s movement, knowing where people are and being able to take action. We are making it possible for probation officers to know where tagged offenders are in real time. That has not been possible before, so it is a really big change.

In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, we recognise the pressure that probation already faces, and now we are asking it to do more. That is why, as he noted, we have invested an additional £700 million in probation and community services by the end of the sentencing review period. We have also hired 2,300 more trainee probation officers. The recruitment of new probation officers has gone well, and we plan to bring on board 1,300 more by March 2027.

We have made substantial progress on productivity in probation through the introduction of Justice Transcribe, and we have reduced probation officer case loads by 25%. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Timpson for his work in this area; he was relentless in his focus on improving probation. I think he is still in his place—yes, he is. I am delighted to have him as my guardian angel on my shoulder.

I said earlier that we cannot allow our prisons to return to the cliff edge that we faced in 2024. Changes to the implementation of the Sentencing Act inevitably have an effect on prison capacity, and we have a duty to ensure that there is enough space in prisons to meet demand. The Lord Chancellor has therefore brought forward £110 million to convert existing prison spaces into cells. We are also accelerating current builds and securing sites for future prisons. This will help us to reach our ambitious target of creating 14,000 additional prison places by 2021, of which 3,200 have already been delivered.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, asked me about planning difficulties and so on. I am happy to give him more detail later, but we have made a good deal of progress on acquiring land and have speeded up the planning process.

In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, we are also freeing up capacity by accelerating the removal of foreign national offenders: I am sure I will come back to that. We will shortly commence a power under the Sentencing Act allowing eligible offenders to be removed immediately after sentencing. That will not include dangerous offenders.

My time is up, but I want to address the points that were made about IPP. This is a very significant change. We can talk at greater length on noble Lords’ questions about how we are going to go about this, but taking those sentences off the statute book is an absolute priority and would still be an absolute priority even if the prisons were half empty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend and pay tribute to him for the work that he has done, along with many other noble Lords on all sides of the House, to move us forward on the question of IPPs and how we regularise the situation. I should reinforce this: it goes without saying that we are not going to release people the Government or Parole Board think are dangerous, and we will put in place arrangements to make sure that we do not.

On recall specifically, we are planning to consider whether we can make more use of the risk-assessed recall review. I am happy to discuss this with my noble friend and others to address some of the concerns raised, but the recall powers are there for a reason and we do not propose to get rid of them. We are proposing to make sure that they are used in a way that keeps the public safe, but does not keep people in unnecessarily.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I know that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, wants to get up, but I want to respond quickly to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, about implementation. It is obviously very early days. The Prime Minister has made a commitment to legislate in this Parliament. That is a major step forward and I absolutely undertake to keep the House, and noble Lords who are interested in this, up to date as our thinking develops. But I am sure he understands that I cannot explain precisely how we are going to do it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

We will of course take all the standard precautions, including fire safety, in the provision of these new cells. They are not cheap—that is not a secret —and I think the Lord Chancellor said that the numbers will be in the middle of the range the noble Lord suggests. I agree that we need to make sure that these places are properly staffed. On increases in capacity, as noble Lords know, I am not generally one for blaming the previous Government, but they created 500 new places net in 14 years; we have created 374 in two years.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the noble Lord, who I believe is actually interested in this subject, that this is not a zero-sum game and year zero is not 2024. I pointed out to the then Justice Secretary Jack Straw in July 2007 in the other place that, thanks to the Blair-Brown regime creating 3,000 new criminal offences through 65 new Acts of Parliament that affected the criminal law, the prison population increased. What they forgot about was the need to create prison capacity to put all these new prisoners in. When Lord Hurd of Westwell was Home Secretary in 1990, the prison population was 40,000; it is now just short of 88,000. I am not making a party-political point, I promise, but I do find it a bit boring when Ministers in this Government say it was all the fault of the 2010 to 2024 Government and has nothing whatever to do with what happened before.

Let me give the Minister a gentle suggestion. His noble friend Lord Woodley, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and I earlier this year put forward Amendment 96 to the then Sentencing Bill, which would have allowed a panel of judges to reconsider the imprisonment of those prisoners on IPP sentences. Could he have a look at it and see if he can bring it back? It would take a one-clause Bill, which we could get through this House in 20 minutes—and through the other House in God only knows how long. But we could pass that law to improve the condition of the people my noble friend Lord Clarke has mentioned, and to some small extent reduce the overcrowding of our prisons, which cannot function if they are overcrowded. We just churn people round and round and round. It is an expensive waste of human life.

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord. I am interested. I hope I sound interested. I have been interested in all this for a very long time. In fact, I am starting to bore even myself, not just the noble and learned Lord. But I take what he said seriously. As I say, in general I am not one for blaming the previous Government. I absolutely recognise that this has been going on for a long time now and we have not managed to expand the prison estate. There have been successive announcements, but I think we are making some progress in that regard. We are not going to get down to the sorts of numbers that the noble and learned Lord is talking about—he knows that—but we have to make those commitments on prison building.

On IPPs, I will absolutely look at the amendment that the noble and learned Lord proposed. Obviously, at this stage, we are working our way through exactly how we do this, and I am sure I will be back before your Lordships at the Dispatch Box before long to set that out.

There is one other thing, which I should have mentioned when the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, was speaking. My noble friend Lord Blunkett, who cannot be in his place today, said to me that these sentences had not worked in the way they intended, which is a kind of confirmation of what the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, said.