Prisoner Releases in Error

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I will not be giving a running commentary on the numbers, but we will be publishing the breakdown of all that detail in the normal way in July next year. It is important to recognise that 91 released in error is too many. We need to learn from what Dame Lynne Owen’s review finds out and act upon it, but we also need to get going now. That is what we have done. We have had the first board meeting of the justice performance board. We have set up the urgent warrant query unit, which is going to be helpful because we recognise that is where a number of the issues occur. The digital rapid response unit has gone into Wandsworth and—this is where the AI element comes in—it has already recognised that there are four common points of failure that it thinks AI will significantly help, although it will not help all those issues. We have an awful lot to do, and it is a challenge I am looking forward to embracing.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a considerable sympathy for the Minister. I am certain that under previous Secretaries of State for Justice and Home Secretaries, including me, there have been frequent inadvertent releases of prisoners. My noble friend is right that the past 14 years and the cuts of thousands of prison officers cannot have helped this situation, so I wish him well. My question to him concerns the victims, because I am sure all noble Lords can imagine, perhaps even understand, the fear and distress that victims and their families suffer when they learn of such mistaken releases. Can the Minister assure us that everything has been done to inform victims and their families promptly and fully if an offender is mistakenly released? Will he say something about the measures that have been taken to ensure that that is the case?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question, especially referring to victims. Victims always have to come first. I appreciate what a difficult time it must have been for victims and their families knowing that prisoners who they thought were in prison were actually out in the community. Where a victim has a victim liaison officer and is part of the victim contact scheme, they will be engaged in that process. It is important to me that that happens. I refer to my noble friend’s initial comment around the fact that this has been a problem for some time. That is one of the reasons why in my speech I specifically said that I know that the previous Government were trying to improve this. Across government, politicians and civil servants have been trying to improve accuracy and systems. This is something that we need to embrace, but as part of the process, we need to understand that victims come first, and the damage this does to victims is significant.

IPP Sentences

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The Parole Board is the best way to determine whether someone’s risk is sufficient to be managed in the community. It is important that when IPP prisoners go in front of the Parole Board, they are prepared in a way to have a successful release. That is why the IPP action plan is the right way to go, and why we are seeing significant increases in the number of people released and rereleased. We need to make sure that the IPP action plan works but also—this is one of the things I am doing for most of my days—that our prisons are good prisons that rehabilitate people and that when they leave, they do not come back.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, can I commend the Minister’s approach? There are two sides to this story. One of them is obviously the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about the difficulties faced by people who are indefinitely detained, but the other, which the Minister has, thankfully, mentioned every time he has had to speak on this issue, is the interests of the public and public safety. Therefore, the action plan, which tries to balance those two interests, is exactly the right way to approach this.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his comments. What is important is that the Parole Board is doing a fantastic job; its staff are fantastic public servants. The release decisions are steady: 45% of hearings over the past five years have led to a positive release. The reason why I think that this is going in the right direction is that these people are increasingly complex individuals. That is why the IPP action plan is working; we need to keep the pressure on. One thing that I bring from my experience of running a business is improving everything, having targets, having real focus and holding people to account.

Police, Prison and Probation Officers

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I hope we will not have to wait too long for the Independent Sentencing Review; I may need to ask some noble and learned Lords about what the exact dates are. The best day I have had in this job—and I have had lots of really good days—was going to the intensive supervision court in Birmingham. It was incredibly uplifting seeing female offenders coming up from the cells in the morning looking very ill and then seeing how the lives of those who have been engaging with the intensive supervision court for six months have changed. But they knew that they had to engage with probation, housing and often drug and addiction work—and, if they did not, they went to prison.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Government and congratulate them on the re-establishment and re-emphasis of neighbourhood policing. The running down of neighbourhood policing was a terrible mistake by the last Government. Will my noble friend the Minister accept that neighbourhood policing is not just an essential element of effective policing but crucial to the confidence that the public have in the police service, because they can see police on the beat and in their own neighbourhood?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of British policing, and it is the right model for us. We lost 20,000 police officers under the last Government, but we expect up to an initial 3,000 neighbourhood officers in neighbourhood policing roles by the end of next year. Every community deserves visible, proactive and accessible neighbourhood policing, with officers tackling issues that matter to people.

Drones: High-security Prisons

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)]

The noble and learned Lord is completely right that drones pose a major and serious threat to all our prisons. I have been visiting Manchester prison for over 20 years, and I went there just before Christmas, in the light of the problems that it has. I saw for myself the issues that staff are dealing with, with 49% of the prisoners arriving in the prison being addicted to drugs. I cannot share the counter-drone tactics as that would play into the hands of sophisticated and serious organised criminals. I can assure the noble and learned Lord that we are currently getting on with a number of fixes, but the biggest fix is ensuring there is no market for drugs and weapons in the first place, and that people in prison are there to get on with their sentence, get educated and do purposeful activity, so that when they are out, they stay out.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm the magnitude of the challenge that he has inherited? Is it not the case that, during the period of the previous Government, there was an increase in drug finds of 44%? In the year until March last year, there was an increase in weapon finds of 24%. The Minister now faces a challenge because of the fact that, over the past 14 years, very little has been done to confront the challenge.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is completely right that the prisons I am visiting now are very different from the prisons I visited 15 or 20 years ago. The buildings are often in decrepit states of repair. We have a lot of new staff who are still learning the skills of being a prison officer and we have an awful lot more to do to ensure that people, when they are in prison, spend their days purposefully, not just sitting in their cells.

Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, I completely support the general thrust of the Statement and the principles underlying it. Of course we will have problems with the Treasury—every department does on every occasion—but I completely welcome it, in particular the appointment of David Gauke. That is a very good start to the bipartisan approach, which I have no doubt will be shared by the opposition spokesman, in his usual supportive role.

On a specific point, right now the evidence shows that over half of adults on short-term sentences will reoffend—that is a terrible number. Meanwhile, community orders have a much lesser extent of reoffending: I think the figure is 34%. Can the Minister assure me that why and how that might be replicated will be considered in the review?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. Like him, I am pleased that David Gauke has agreed to chair this review panel. I have worked closely with him—he was one of my trustees at the Prison Reform Trust—so I know not just how capable he is but how enthusiastic he is for prison reform. We will shortly announce the rest of the panel and I am sure my noble friend will welcome them as enthusiastically.

I agree with my noble friend about community sentences for adults who would otherwise have short-term sentences. I have been in prisons for 22 years and I have seen too many people go in and come out no different. We need to use the opportunity when they are in prison to overcome their mental health and addiction problems. When they leave, they need somewhere to live and, hopefully, a job. It is much easier to do a lot of that—when the risks are right—when someone is in the community, not in prison.