Imprisonment for Public Protection

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing the debate and making a comprehensive, detailed and powerful argument about the injustices of what are supposedly short-term sentences.

There has been much agreement in the debate, so we await solid answers from the Government about the action they will take on this important issue. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) pointed out, there were 2,403 prisoners still serving IPP sentences, yet to be released, as of March this year, and 90% of them have already served the minimum tariff handed down by the judge at their trial.

We cannot say that enough has been done in the seven years since the change. As the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), put it, the policy has been corrected, but not retrospectively. That means that thousands of people are waiting in limbo, as their ability to imagine a world outside prison, and their chance of rebuilding their lives without reoffending, deteriorate. I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) made a point about balance. We should remember that the people in question have, to use his words, committed a crime and hurt a victim. The balance to be struck is between punishment for the offence and providing a pathway to rehabilitation.

The argument against IPP sentencing is clear, and the Government do not seem to disagree with us on that simple question of justice: indefinite custody with no fixed end should be used only for the most serious offences, where the public would be genuinely at risk. We have heard many examples where that was not really the case, and where relatively minor crimes are still being punished disproportionately with what some feel amounts to a life sentence. The Howard League for Penal Reform has said that

“this cohort of prisoners had particular difficulties with anxiety as they saw others who had been convicted of similar crimes after 2008 enter and leave prison while they were detained substantially beyond their tariff date.”

Where people are safe to be released, we should quite clearly not be keeping them in custody to serve their sentence many times over. It is against all the most basic principles of fairness and justice, and the punishment must fit the crime—a point that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) stressed in his speech.

[Alex Chalk]

I agree with every word that the hon. Lady is saying. The punishment must fit the crime, but does she agree that the real concern is that the punishments are not what judges handed down in court, when they had all the facts before them, but are increasingly the preserve of the people, within custody, who apply often completely extraneous considerations?

[Gloria De Piero]

That point is well made and I thank the hon. Gentleman.

The impact on those serving IPP sentences and their families is heartbreaking. We have heard of people who have self-harmed and died by suicide in prison. The shocking fact, mentioned by many of those who spoke, that IPP prisoners are significantly more likely to self-harm than both determinate-sentence prisoners and life-sentence prisoners, goes to show the urgency with which the Government need to tackle the issue. As the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) made clear, IPP prisoners are victims of pretty catastrophic policy making.

A study published for the Griffins Society in 2019 examined the impact on women serving IPP sentences. Six of the nine women interviewed had tried to commit suicide multiple times during the sentence, and five of the nine had had their children taken into care. Those are significant risks for the 43 women still serving IPP sentences today, and their innocent families. I would love to know what action the Government have taken on the matter. What have they done, for instance, in response to the family of Tommy Nicol who, as we have heard, died by suicide while serving an IPP sentence? His sister Donna has called for the sentences of those serving initial tariffs of four years or less to be converted to fixed sentences. It seems that that could be a common-sense way to tackle the ongoing injustice of IPP prisoners. What is the Government’s position on that?

We can talk about the flaws in the original policy of IPP itself. We all agree on that. However, a major reason why many prisoners who have served their time are still waiting in limbo is the chronic mismanagement of the justice system that the Government have presided over. That mismanagement affects everyone involved in our prison system—not just prisoners with IPP sentences.

We have heard about prisoners who have been asked to demonstrate commitment to therapy for mental health issues, to prove that they are fit for release, but who have no access to such therapy in the prison they are in. That is in part due to the sheer numbers of people on waiting lists for those much-needed courses in our overcrowded prisons. I have urged the Government before, and I will urge them again, to take action on the deficit in mental health provision in all parts of society. However, one in three prisoners has mental health issues and the people involved are often more of a risk to society, so surely prison is one area where particular attention is given to mental health provision. Can the Minister tell me what the Government are doing to make mental health a priority in our prisons?

There are other reasons for the situation, specific to IPP prisoners, that would be far easier to fix. We have heard in the debate about prisoners being given access to important courses of the kind I mentioned based on how close they are to their release date, which in the case of an IPP prisoner is indefinite. If we are serious about rehabilitation, those prisoners will need more support on their release from prison. When people emerge from prison to a housing market in crisis, low-paid and insecure work as the only option, and a safety net that has been slashed by austerity over the past decade of Tory rule, it is unsurprising that reoffending rates are so abysmal.

Although the important issue of IPP sentences is, quite rightly, the focus of today’s discussion, we are speaking about it in the context of a wider justice system that is falling apart. Many prisons are operating at significantly over their certified capacity. That overcrowding is just one factor that has led to prisons becoming substantially more violent in recent years.

The deficit in the provision of courses that make recidivism less likely, including training for work and mental health therapy, is in part due to the impossible number of prisoners on the waiting list in any given prison. Those problems are especially acute for the IPP prisoners who are the subject of the debate, but they affect all types of prisoners and, with them, our broader social fabric. That is what will really put public safety at risk—not the release of prisoners who may well be ready to reintegrate into society but who are not given a chance to prove it. What are the Government doing about overcrowding, and how many more Tommy Nicols are we likely to lose while we wait for them to take action?