Victims and Prisoners Bill

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise possibly as an elder, owing to my advanced age; but perhaps not. I would like to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. As he said, there is almost nothing left to say about these prisoners. It is an injustice. I hope that the Government are considering accepting some of these amendments. We cannot say that we have a justice system if we have an innate injustice like this.

I support the tributes to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, but also to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, with whom I have almost nothing in common; we have a very tetchy relationship but, on this, I think he is being superlative in working for the rights of IPP prisoners.

As Greens, we believe that prison is overused as a tool of justice. Far too many people are imprisoned when there are much more effective ways of rehabilitation or stopping reoffending. I can understand the anger of people who say that we should lock up serial rapists and murderers and throw away the key. I do understand that anger; but, in this instance, we have, for example, a 17 year-old who steals a bike, or people who grab other people’s mobile phones. This is clearly an injustice; I find it difficult to believe that anybody listening to this would not agree.

The lawyer and campaigner Peter Stefanovic put out an online video about this. It has had 14 million views. A petition to force the Government to debate this again got easily 10,000 signatures. There is massive public support for sorting out this issue. I know that the Government care very much about the will of the British public. The word that came through for me in some of the responses to the video was “cruel”. The sentencing and continued imprisonment of IPP prisoners has just been cruel. Please, let us see some progress on this Bill, then we can all take the Ministers out for a cup of tea.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for moving his amendment. I have tabled Amendment 156; it may be convenient to speak to it now. Before doing so, I have some general points to make about the whole issue of IPP, which I will not repeat in detail later.

I am grateful for all the work that my noble friend Lord Moylan has done along with the Prison Reform Trust and UNGRIPP. In 2017, as a result of a debate initiated by the late noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood—I am grateful for the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti —I decided to take a very close look at our penal system. I soon found that I needed to widen my interest to the whole of the criminal justice system because there is so much is wrong with it. One obvious example is joint enterprise murder, but that is for another day.

Let no one think that I am some sort of soft, bleeding heart, out-of-touch do-gooder. I am not. I believe in firm discipline, with all that that implies. But—I repeat, but—no more disciplinary sanctions should be applied, including incarceration, than are needed to have the desired, legitimate effects of protecting the public by incapacitation, and providing retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. The current IPP regime clearly fails this test on all counts. I will not rehearse the heart-rending histories that we have all heard about. They are not in dispute.

I also accept that some prisoners on an IPP sentence may not be releasable any time soon even under a resentencing scheme. However, keeping prisoners incarcerated unnecessarily costs £44,000 per annum per prisoner and wastes resources. We know we have a terrible prison system because the Chief Inspector of Prisons tell us that is so. In his 2023 report, he said that inspectors have run out of superlatives to describe how poor the purposeful activity component of prison life is, or words to that effect. No wonder IPP prisoners find it so hard to demonstrate any progress with rehabilitation.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that I have covered the various points. I have not addressed the wider points about the prison system in general; that is for another day and I look forward to a further debate, but I hope that I have replied sufficiently for the moment.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister telling us that it is inconceivable that the Government would want to increase the licence period?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I do not know that one would use the word “inconceivable”. The Government do not see any prospect of that happening at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I am not a lawyer but I do have some experience of visiting prisons, thanks to the Koestler Trust, which takes art into prisons. I was quite a close friend of the late, much- lamented and learned Lord Brown, so I feel quite strongly about what I have heard. I have been very moved by this discussion and the toing and froing between quite considerable legal minds.

What I took from my time visiting prisons was that essential ingredient of hope. The arts sometimes gave hope but, of course, there were instances, which we have been hearing about with IPP, where hope had been vanquished. I want to make only one simple point. No greater tribute could be paid to the late Lord Brown than that the Government acknowledge the point he made, and that other noble Lords are making, and come to some arrangement to bring to a close this system, which is not only iniquitous but almost cruel. People need to know at the end of the day that there is some chance of once again leading a normal life.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, on the first group of amendments my noble and learned friend the Minister said that there was a cohort of IPP prisoners who had never been released and he suggested that it was because they did not meet the tests of the Parole Board. My concern is that the prison system has not been able to offer the rehabilitation necessary for these prisoners to demonstrate that they could safely be released. That is why I strongly support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan.

I also have strong support for the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, particularly because it refers to prisoners whom the Secretary of State would release if he was able to but cannot. There must be a great cost to keeping those prisoners in prison who are there because the Secretary of State does not have the power to release them.