Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Judge Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Lords Hansard - part one & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

I very much hope that my noble friend will accept the modest changes effected by this amendment. I hope that noble Lords will bear in mind not only the plight of the offenders affected by this sentence but also that of their families, who have stuck with them in many cases and struggled and fought for them and whose lives, as a family, have been disrupted, damaged and, in some cases, come close to destruction by the injustice done and the practical impossibility of recovering the life of a free citizen. I hope to hear encouragement and undertakings from my noble friend. If not, I give notice now that, reluctantly, I may wish to test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

It is such a folly, is it not, for legislatures to impose strict, rigid, statutory tramlines on sentencing decisions? That is what this problem stems from and I very much regret that the current Bill finds some more rigid, statutory tramlines to affect the sentencing decision.

What is the problem with this? It is very complex but I will try to sum it up. With the IPP, many of those subject to it or sentenced to it found that their dangerousness as an individual was being predicted on the basis of strict statutory assumptions of general application. That is not the way that we should legislate.

No one wants anybody dangerous to be released. I do not mean to be light-hearted about this, but nobody has ever thought that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was a soft, lily-livered—I do not know what the right epithet would be, but he has never been one of them. He was responsible for this Act. He was the Minister and, if I may say so, I greatly admire his courage in coming to Parliament to say that something went wrong.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Lord Judge (CB)]

We all know that IPPs are a failure. They were abolished years ago. They are not available. Why on earth do we continue to keep people subjected to them, incarcerated, unless they are indeed dangerous.

May I take a completely trivial example? My daughter is in South Africa. She hit the red line four days after the new virus appeared. If she comes back, she is subjected—or was—to 11 days’ incarceration in a hotel, which is trivial compared to anybody in prison. That has changed and the red lines have gone. Is it really being suggested that those who were in a hotel, in quarantine, should now continue to be in quarantine although people coming in from South Africa will no longer be subjected to it? Of course not; it is completely daft.

I regret to say that I think the current situation is daft. We really must try to help the Government get rid of this absurdity and—can we also remember?—enable justice to be done to a large number of individuals.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I think the last point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, needs to be said often and loudly. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett—I praised him in Committee—was brave enough to admit that this form of sentence was wrong. My noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham abolished it when he was Secretary of State for Justice, but we are left with what I may call the detritus of this admitted mistake. What we must do now is clear it up. We have got rid of the sentence. As the noble and learned Lord said, it is no longer available. We are left with, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, just pointed out in a highly effective speech—and in Committee —hundreds of people remaining in prison long beyond their punishment tariff and others, as my noble friend Lord Moylan pointed out, on licence well beyond any sensible period.

I am a signatory to my noble friend’s amendment but, as I said in Committee, I could have signed any of the amendments to do with reforming IPPs. I say, as both a Member of this House and as a fellow trustee of the Prison Reform Trust with the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, that we have got to the stage now where nobody who has sense of justice or common sense could defend what we now have. All we are looking for is a way in which the Government can complete the task that my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke began when he was Secretary of State for Justice and which for some reason has not been completed in the eight or so years since the sentence was abolished.

Now is the time. If we are to have a Bill as huge as this, let us make good use of it by adding into it just provisions that do justice and which prevent men and women being incarcerated or on licence still for no very good reason. If I may say so, let us also get rid of this provision that is not doing the victims of their crimes any good either. Victims of criminal activity want justice both for them and for the defendant, but this is not justice for either the defendant or the victim.