Imprisonment for Public Protection Action Plan

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Moylan]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what additional resources will be made available to His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to secure timely delivery of the Imprisonment for Public Protection Action Plan, published on 26 April.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I do not propose to rehearse the history of this sentence, which is well known to most of the participants in the Room. This is an opportunity to look forward rather than back. To summarise the basic facts, there are 2,892 IPP prisoners in prison; 1,498 of them are on remand, 1,394 have never been released and nearly all of them have served their minimum term—in many cases well over it. The difficulty of completing the hurdles required for progression to release, a lengthy 10-year statutory parole period and the ease with which one can be yanked back into the prison system have made this scandal both intractable for the authorities and a continuing mental torture for the prisoners and their families.

Hence the optimism when the Justice Select Committee in another place produced its courageous and morally unarguable report last year, drawing attention to the scandal and the suffering, and recommending some clear ways of cutting this Gordian knot through resentencing. The Government’s rejection of that was perhaps not unexpected by some—it was not unexpected by me, to be perfectly honest—but it has had a devastating effect on the mental health of prisoners and their families alike. One of the most dangerous things here is raising hopes only to see them dashed.

Instead, the Government have offered an action plan by way of response to the committee’s report. I think this is your Lordships’ first opportunity to review and consider that action plan. What can one say about it? First, it is a welcome advance on the previous action plan, which consisted of two sides of paper. This at least is a serious effort and it has a great deal of detail. Secondly, it does have a plan, and a timetable. Both those things are very much to be welcomed. Thirdly, I know from ministerial assurances that its implementation has been entrusted to competent and experienced civil servants. I welcome that and have confidence in them.

However, it is yet to be seen whether the plan is the transformative approach we are looking for that will help to resolve this issue. First, the plan fails to acknowledge the injustice lying at the heart of this problem. The Secretary of State, the Lord Chancellor—the new one—appears to be moving in that direction. In the other place recently in debate on the victims Bill, he referred to the IPP regime as a “stain”, possibly echoing comments previously made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. In a letter I have recently seen he refers to it as an iniquity. These are new terms; this is new language that we have not heard from the Ministry of Justice in the past. It is wholly welcome that the acknowledgement of the injustice is coming from the Secretary of State, but is it properly reflected in the action plan, which, it must be said, was prepared before he came into office, although he signed it off? Does the action plan still read too much like an administrative task, rather than what it should be: a morally based mission?

Secondly, the action plan fails to respond fully to what we know are the challenges faced by prisoners who are out on parole. One cannot overestimate the fragility of a person who has to carry the difficulty of rebuilding their life while on parole for a lengthy 10-year period—set by statute as a minimum, despite our efforts in this House to have it reduced when we considered the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill a year or two ago—constantly under threat of being pulled back into jail for what is, in effect, a life sentence. You would have to be a very strong person indeed to be able to live with that and make your life work well.

Other comments could be made about the action plan, but my final point is that it implicitly assumes that prisoners will engage with the new approach rationally and in good faith. The sad fact of the matter is that prisoners have lost their faith in the system. It requires a great deal more than simply turning up and saying, “It’s all different now, and we’re going to make it work”. One has to understand that these people are very fragile and damaged. The plan does not acknowledge that or coherently think about how to approach and engage with them, or indeed with their families, who are potentially a very important part of helping to resolve this issue.

Before I finish, I will say a few words about mental health. As a result of being involved in this over the last six to eight months, I have got to know psychologists working in the field. Some of them have approached me, and I have got involved. Previously, I did not have those contacts, and it is worth repeating a few of the things that they say.

The first is to emphasise that these prisoners are damaged people. Secondly, as was identified in the Justice Select Committee’s report, they have a tendency to hide that damage because they know that if they admit to mental health problems it makes it more difficult for them to get their parole. Therefore, they tend to hide it rather than look for treatment and support. Many of them are constantly on the verge of suicide and self-harm. I understand that there have been at least three suicides since the Secretary of State rejected the resentencing proposal and that, in general, the rate of suicide among IPP prisoners is double that of the normal prison population.

These things need to be borne in mind as examples of completely understandable suffering. One psychologist commented that these prisoners now think in the same way as somebody who has been sentenced wrongly, for a crime they did not commit. It is important to unpackage that: they all acknowledge that they have been sentenced for a crime they did commit and that they should do time in jail, but the fact that that time never seems to come to an end puts them in the same mental place as prisoners who have been wrongly convicted. That is not a good place to be if you are in prison. It is much better to be there knowing that you did something wrong and acknowledging that you have to pay the penalty but knowing that you will leave in due course when that penalty has been paid. They are in great difficulty.

I would like to see, and hear from my noble and learned friend when he speaks at the end, how the action plan could be improved by, first, a sense of the scandal, urgency and harm that underlie the problem, rather than it being purely administrative. I would like to see a credible plan to remove the obstacles for those in prison to complete the progression steps that they have to in order to qualify for parole and release into the community. I would like to see a radical reduction in the parole period and, most importantly, resources and support given to the parole service. That has always been the Cinderella of this problem and, without proper resources, the parole service will not be maintained.