Prisons: Imprisonment for Public Protection

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, from whom I have learned a great deal since I have been in your Lordships’ House. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on securing this debate and acknowledge and applaud her work in this area over years. I am grateful to the organisations that have sent in briefings to inform me generally and inform my contribution. Of course, I thank the Minister, my noble friend Lord Timpson, in his absence for giving of his time to discuss this most vexed of issues. Despite assurances that progress is being made and despite the number of prisoners serving IPPs declining, it is an exceptionally slow rate of decline. The numbers of recalls and their duration has increased, as we have just heard.

We have rehearsed in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions the damage caused by this sentence to prisoners’ mental and emotional health and of the self-harm engendered, as well as ultimately prisoners taking their own lives, as nine did in 2023. It bears repeating the nature of the initial crimes that gave rise to these sentences. Thomas White was given a two-year minimum sentence for stealing a mobile phone but has served 12 years. John Wright, then 17, was given a two-year tariff for headbutting a younger child and stealing his bike—a very unpleasant crime, but he has served 17 years. Martin Myers received a 20-month tariff for the attempted robbery of a cigarette. I am not even sure that that can be accurate, but I am assured that it is, and Martin has served 18 years.

My own MP, Andy Slaughter, who is now, as we have heard, the chair of the Justice Select Committee, has apparently understood rather better than others what a resentencing exercise would mean. He is very clear that it does not mean automatic and immediate releases. I hope that we can pursue this further when time is found for my noble friend Lord Woodley’s Bill to be in Committee.

The action plan is of course welcome, but UNGRIPP asks: having given itself 12 months to see a change by using the action plan, what will happen if there has been insufficient progress in those 12 months? As there are no clear and measurable targets, what are the Government actually aiming for? In this, I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. What are the strategic ways of monitoring progress?

I hope that the Minister is able to reassure us that the use of language such as “in a timely manner” is not being used to obfuscate, rather than clarify what the plan is intended to do. I accept, as others do, that some prisoners have been so damaged by what the state has done to them that release for them is trickier. But endless incarceration cannot be the answer: we must find more and better ways to move forward for these prisoners.

Imprisonment for Public Protection (Re-sentencing) Bill [HL]

Baroness Blower Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, my contribution to this important debate, as part of the “odd bunch” mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, will be brief. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Woodley on bringing this Bill to your Lordships’ House and on his remarkable speech.

During the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Act, there were many well-informed and impassioned speeches on IPP prisoners from all sides of the House, as there have been this morning. Many speeches referenced the remarks of a previous Lord Chancellor that the continuing situation of IPPs was a “stain” on our criminal justice system. We know this, given the levels of mental distress, self-harm and suicide among IPP prisoners. As many have said, hope has been extinguished from their lives. I hope that my own MP, Andy Slaughter, as the chair of the Justice Committee in the other place, will urge action on this.

I wish to make two brief points. First, significant voices have been raised to say that a resentencing exercise is the only fair and just way of dealing with the situation for IPP prisoners. These voices include Dr Alice Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, and the House of Commons Justice Committee report in 2022, which described the IPP sentence as “irredeemably flawed”. The committee proposed in this Bill would provide the structure and parameters to ensure that an effective and fair way forward could be found for dealing with this situation.

Secondly, talk from Governments—both the previous Government and, regrettably, up until now, the current Government—about resentencing not being appropriate abjectly fails to recognise and accept that it is the state that has extinguished hope in these prisoners. The state must therefore act to restore hope and address the most egregious of injustices. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to say something about this in his response.

My noble friend Lord Woodley has done this House, this Government and this justice system a service in bringing forward this Bill. I wish it speedy passage to the statute book. I look forward to voting for the helpful amendments which will come forward in Committee.

Public Libraries

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, many of us will be aware of the work of Zadie Smith, who attributes much of her success to the time she spent in Willesden public library in her somewhat less privileged younger days. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty: wonderful though volunteers are, every library should have the service of a fully qualified librarian.

In this country, it is required that every prison has a library; it is not required that every school has a library, and it should be. I thoroughly endorse the recommendation of a library laureate—I would suggest Zadie Smith or Michael Rosen, but I am sure there are other good candidates—to advocate for school libraries as well as public libraries to ensure reading for pleasure among all our young people.