Oral Answers to Questions
Danny Chambers Excerpts(1 week, 5 days ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. Before we come to question 6, I notice that it was grouped, but to be honest I cannot see a relationship between the questions or why they were grouped together. I hope a message can be passed back to the Department to say that we need to have relevance in the way questions are grouped.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)
The victims code sets out the services and support that victims of crime are entitled to receive from the criminal justice system in England and Wales. That includes the right to access support, which applies regardless of whether they decide to report the crime directly to the police. We provide police and crime commissioners with annual grant funding to commission local, practical, emotional, and therapeutic support services for all victims of crime.
Dr Chambers
England is home to 85% of the world’s chalk streams, which are very rare habitats. In Winchester we are lucky to have the Rivers Itchen and Meon running through the constituency. We know that they are struggling, with only 17% of chalk streams rated as having good ecological health. That is partly because of over-abstraction, partly because of pollution, and partly because of water companies dumping sewage in them. We know that that not only destroys biodiversity but makes people who swim in it sick. Will the Minister, in addition to coming down harder on water companies, commit to implementing a sewage victims compensation scheme for that particular problem?
IPP Sentences
Danny Chambers Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Ms Vaz. I also thank the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing this debate on a hugely important subject. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for mental health, I will start with a story that illustrates the issues that many have been touching on about people not knowing when their release date is going to be and how it can affect mental health.
Many Members will have heard of Tommy Nicol. He is a tragic illustration of what can happen when the mental health needs of IPP prisoners go unmet. Tommy was sentenced to four years for robbery, but he served six years without hope of release. The Parole Board then recommended that Tommy complete a course of therapy, but there were no services available. When he subsequently moved prisons to access better services, he self-harmed and set fire to his cell. That then landed him in isolation, where he became psychotic and inflicted more self-harm. Just three days after being moved into isolation, he tragically took his own life.
Despite the clear warnings that Tommy was psychiatrically unwell, no mental health assessment was ever carried out and there was zero mental health support during his time in isolation. The consultant forensic psychiatrist who gave evidence at the inquest said that the IPP sentence had contributed to Tommy’s death, as he had completely lost hope. Tommy had made a complaint a few years previously that his lack of a certain release date was the
“psychological torture of a person who is doing 99 years”.
We know that individuals serving IPP sentences often end up extremely unwell, with high rates of suicide and self-harm. It is hard to imagine being locked behind bars for maybe 22 hours a day without hope of release. Most of us here seem to agree with Tommy that that amounts to psychological torture.
Today we are focusing on the critical issue of IPP sentences, but to understand the impact they are having, it is worth considering them in the broader context of the state of our prisons. HMP Winchester in my constituency serves as a stark example of the ongoing crisis. Just last week, it was placed under the urgent notification process following an inspection by HM inspectorate of prisons. The findings paint a troubled picture: the years of underinvestment have left lasting physical and psychological impacts on both prisoners and staff. Resources for rehabilitation and education are severely lacking. That only perpetuates the high reoffending rates, which are bad for the prisoners and costs taxpayers even more in the long run.
If rehabilitation is the fundamental purpose of prison, how can we expect individuals to reform when faced with conditions like those reported last week in HMP Winchester? Consider these distressing statistics: 47% of prisoners report easy access to drugs; 41% return positive results on random drug tests; many are sleeping in cramped and dirty cells; self-harm and suicide have become normalised and prisoners spend up to 21.5 hours each day confined to their cells, with only 2.5 hours outside. Those conditions, marked by violence, isolation and pervasive drug use, paint a bleak reality that makes rehabilitation nearly impossible.
Individuals serving IPP sentences are suffering immensely, with mental health issues running high and suicide and self-harm rates elevated. IPP prisoners are two and a half times more likely to self-harm than those serving other types of sentences, and we know that prisoners in general are more likely to self-harm than the general population. Despite that, the recent independent sentencing review excludes IPP sentences entirely. It is profoundly unjust that some individuals with lesser offences are stuck in IPP limbo, while others who committed more serious crimes are being released early under the Government’s current policy. Reforming IPP sentences could alleviate prison overcrowding, improve mental health outcomes and enhance safety, yet those reforms remain absent.
The Lib Dems urge the Government to establish an expert committee to advise on how we can swiftly resentence individuals still serving IPP terms. Addressing the crisis in our prisons, at HMP Winchester and all the others, is essential. We must right the wrongs of IPP sentencing. If our goal is rehabilitation, we should be providing the resources and the conditions necessary for these individuals to re-enter society as productive citizens, not leaving them scarred by indefinite incarceration.
The Secretary of State has assured us that the independent sentencing review imposes no constraints, and yet a glaring oversight persists: the exclusion of IPP sentences. Nearly 3,000 individuals remain incarcerated without a defined release date, some for lesser offences than those who have recently been released under the current policy. Reforming these sentences is not only a step towards justice, but a practical partial solution to overcrowding. As mental health spokesperson, I am particularly concerned about the deterioration of IPP prisoners’ mental health. As the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green mentioned, we are worried about how that may affect any subsequent parole hearings. We ask the Government why they have chosen to exclude IPP sentences from the review, and whether that that decision will be reconsidered.
