Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Baroness Lawlor and Lord German

Committee stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I support and move this amendment for my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough, who is absent attending the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s 148th assembly in Geneva. He had hoped to move his amendment on 12 March, but Committee proceedings were concluded before he was able to do so.

Amendment 171A seeks to establish the presumption that Parole Board hearings would be open to the public—with exceptions, of course. It seeks, more generally, to improve public faith and trust in the criminal justice system. This is both a probing and permissive amendment, and a natural progression to and consolidation of the reforms undertaken by Ministers over the last six years arising from the public disquiet over the proposed release of serial rapist John Worboys in 2018. That resulted in a review of the parole system and a public consultation published in 2022, and a finding in the High Court in March 2018 that the Parole Board’s Rule 25—a blanket ban on transparency and details of the board’s deliberations—was unlawful.

The Government have moved to address the very serious failings identified by the Worboys case, by allowing summaries of Parole Board decisions to be provided to victims and other interested parties, and to provide for a reconsideration mechanism, introduced in 2019, which allows a prisoner and/or the Secretary of State for Justice to seek reconsideration of a number of decisions taken by the board within 21 days. Victims may now also seek a judicial review on the grounds that decisions are procedurally unfair or irrational.

Significantly, the Parole Board’s 2019 Rule 15 was amended by secondary legislation in 2022 to enable public hearings to be facilitated on request to the chair of the Parole Board, in the “interests of justice”. This test is already used by the Mental Health Tribunal. This amendment is cautious, circumspect, and with caveats in its proposed new subsections (5) and (7). It presumes no absolute right to open the Parole Board hearings to the most serious cases, but presents a balance between the interests of the victim, prisoners and the wider criminal justice system, and imposes a statutory duty on Ministers to take note of the importance of rehabilitation, reducing recidivism, fairness and due process.

Finally, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will articulate the Government’s current thinking on, and rationale for, limited reform envisaged in this matter. I urge that they allow for public hearings to become the default position, and I look forward to his reply.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, at the request of my noble friend Lord Marks, I will speak to his amendment in this group, which is Amendment 171B about the hearing timeframes for the Parole Board to have some flexibility in this matter. I apologise; I would have said, in relation to the two stand part notices, that there were a number of questions that I asked of the noble Earl. I know it has been only a short period of time—I am sure they are on their way—but I just wanted to remind him. I am sure that his smile tells me that there are going to be satisfactory replies shortly.

I come back to Amendment 171B. The current rules are that the release of prisoners serving a life sentence is determined by the Parole Board on or after they have served their minimum tariff. The first parole review to consider a prisoner for release will usually begin six months prior to their tariff expiry and, if a prisoner is not released at their on-tariff review, they will have a further post-tariff review at least every two years. The Parole Board process is lengthy and can take upwards of six months for the whole process to be dealt with. Their victims are asked whether they wish to submit a personal statement; although the Parole Board does not have direct contact with victims, the victim liaison officer will contact them about submitting a personal statement. We know that there has recently been an opportunity for victims to appear and observe some Parole Board hearings as part of the latest pilot.

For victims and family members, going through the Parole Board process can be a highly traumatic experience, forcing them to relive the original offence and the impact it has on them. While victims and families welcome having a voice in the process through being able to submit an impact statement, many feel trapped and unable to move on when their offender is repeatedly coming up for parole, even when it is clear that the circumstances have not changed.

Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2023

Debate between Baroness Lawlor and Lord German

Monday 24th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

May I ask my noble friend the Minister about something to do with the policy background? In discussing the changes for which the order provides, both in function and fee levels under the regulations, my noble friend referred to one of the policy objectives: the overall security of our borders. In discussing security here and elsewhere, the Government have referred to pre-entry checks that will facilitate entry at our borders. My related question is: is there any proposal or plan to have ongoing checks, including checks when a successful applicant leaves the country, given that the proposed electronic travel authorisations will last for up to two years for short visits? If so, what does the Home Office intend to do to operate these?

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I want to raise two main issues with the Minister. He will undoubtedly not be surprised to hear that the first is a process issue; the second will deal with the operation and impact of this SI.

As the Minister knows, he is the Minister responsible for all SIs in the Home Office. I am sure that he will have seen and noted the criticisms and comments expressed in the 44th report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of this House, which draws this SI to the special attention of this House, and its findings on the Home Office’s approach to SIs more generally.

I also note the Minister’s remarks to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in giving evidence on 11 May. There is much information in that evidence, so I will restrict myself to looking at Explanatory Memorandums and the Minister’s role in all Home Office SIs. The committee’s report states:

“The Home Office’s Explanatory Memorandum (EM) omitted key information about the wider context of the policy changes, something that has been a theme of our comments on recent EMs from the department”.


As this is where the examination of these matters is concerned, would the Minister like to respond to this point?

Secondly on the Minister’s role, I note the judicial analogy he gave in evidence to the committee. The question was being asked by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who is of course a former Supreme Court judge. He asked the Minister,

“do you look at the Explanatory Memorandum before it is sent out, or are you a bit like some Silks who never read the skeleton argument that they will subsequently have to defend?”

The Minister replied:

“I cannot confess that I read every SI that the Home Office lays before Parliament and every Explanatory Memorandum. If there was a really controversial or difficult SI, the expectation is that it would be raised with me as the SI Minister and I would review it”.


The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, then went on to ask:

“Do you then, in that process, go through it, read it and say, ‘Look, this hasn’t got the right disclosure. You ought to be making this point and that point’, a bit like you would as a Silk dealing with your junior?”


To this the Minister replied—and I am sure he remembers this:

“I shall certainly take that away and adopt that as best practice”.


Could the Minister tell us how that best practice is going, having adopted it? There are clearly criticisms in this report and the Committee would like to hear how the Home Office Minister is responding on behalf of the whole Home Office.

I turn to the content of the SI, on which I have three issues to raise. The first is the impact on tourism from the ETA, the second is the impact on universities—I shall cite Cranfield University in particular—and the third is the operations of the common travel area. This SI touches on all three and there are certainly matters that could do with further explanation.

First, on tourism, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report, in paragraphs 7 to 10, outlines the range of potential negative economic impacts. Given that the figure the Minister referred to is based on the cost of ETAs and processing them, rather than the impact on the tourism industry, and given the flexing from the difficulty in understanding how many people this will deter from entering the United Kingdom, why has visitor expenditure not been quantified in the documentation that accompanies this SI? I am sure that there are data that outline visitor spend per head in country. Any tourist who comes into this country will be spending money here on hotels, food, visitor attractions and so on. Does the Minister agree that it is possible to quantify the level of expenditure per head? If the reduction is 1% or whatever figure is inherent in the documentation, you could quantify that as a loss to the tourism industry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I have a point of clarification. What I do not understand, behind the noble Lord’s probing, is that if it is a requirement under law to have an ETA for all visitors coming, for instance, from the Republic of Ireland, if they travel on a ferry, as the noble Lord suggests, over to somewhere else, or indeed if they come to this country—it will not be required for the Republic but it will for Northern Ireland—is it not the law that they must have it? For instance, it is very important for insurance purposes if they are taking a car on the ferry. They must be covered under law and they must have an authorised travel document, as I understand it. So why would this be an issue, given the way that our law works? If you are obliged to do something, it is expected that you will do it.

[Lord German (LD)]

I thank the noble Baroness; she has asked the question to which I particularly wanted to know the answer: how do you enforce it? There is no way of knowing whether anyone has any documentation at all. Whether people avoid it deliberately or because they do not know and they are just moving around, at some stage we have to know—and we do not know. It is easy if you are coming in from Europe, because if you are doing so in any other capacity there is definitely a documentation check, but there is no documentation check coming into the United Kingdom and Great Britain. That is the bit I am trying to find out and that is why I have asked the question. I know this is very tricky and that discussion is going on about it, but I just do not understand how enforcement of any sort will—or could—take place.