Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hanson of Flint Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

I made some cautious remarks a little earlier about criminal justice statistics. There is a very small number of people on indeterminate sentences who have ever been released, and I am very glad that there has been a low level of reoffending.

We are committed to ending that system. We have 3,500 people who have finished their normal sentence—that is, the tariff—and are unable to satisfy the Parole Board that they can be released, but we are looking at all those cases to find the best possible way of ensuring that the bulk of them do not reoffend. Some of them always will, however, and we cannot avoid that.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

On the question of compensation for overseas terrorism, will the Secretary of State confirm that any scheme eventually brought in will apply from 18 January 2010, as originally proposed by the previous Labour Government?

[Mr Clarke]

I do not want to trail parts of the announcement that we will make when we are able to start the consultation, but I do remember very clearly that that was the commitment upon which everybody has been firmly proceeding.