Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier: the Bill is best left as it is. Although it is a limited purpose Bill and to be welcomed, there is plainly a need for a proper review of the Parole Board in due course. That is the occasion on which we should look at matters in the round.

In my experience, the Parole Board approaches the exercise of its discretion with the greatest possible care and, in cases where there are issues of mental capacity, takes infinite care to ensure that it has available all the necessary information, including reports from the prisoner. Occasionally, mistakes are made. However, there is always the remedy of judicial review, and it seems to me that it would be much better to leave the Bill as it is, allowing any errors on matters as obvious as mental capacity or findings of the trial judge to be taken into account. The Bill should be left alone; we should not amend it.

Earlier this week, we considered the state into which the law of sentencing has got by a piecemeal approach. It is not something we should do in criminal justice. Although I shall have something to say in detail about Amendment 3, I accept entirely the analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. However, my acceptance of their analysis of the proper approach does not persuade me that it is necessary to amend the Bill. The issues can be safely left to the discretion of the Parole Board, and there is a remedy if it fails to do that.

[Lord Balfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I spoke in Committee and, subsequent to that, I had an exchange of correspondence with Marie McCourt. I would not like anything said today, and I do not think that any noble Lord would mean it, to take away from the need to right the hurt that she, and those dear to her, have felt.

I said on the last occasion that the Parole Board itself needed a thorough overhaul and the Minister, if I remember correctly, agreed with me. My concern here, as it is in many places, is that any law brought in to right a specific wrong can often be wrong itself—you need a much more generalist approach.

None the less, I welcome the Bill. My point is that, when you deal with mental capacity, you also have to remember human frailty. The fact of the matter is that people can just forget. There is at least an element of possibility that someone could just forget what they had done. It is also possible that they could just forget who photographs were of. I know that that may not be a popular thing to say but, going back many years to when I was in the Territorial Army, we used to have exercises where we dropped people and they then had to find their way to places. I was always amazed at how people could not recognise things. There is a genuine defence that someone has just forgotten.

Secondly, I hope that the Minister can assure us that we are not passing a law that will go to Strasbourg to be interpreted. When I look at this, I wonder whether it will pretty quickly end up in the European Court of Human Rights, where it will not be us doing the legislating but the judges in Strasbourg. I welcome the Minister’s assurance that he really does think that it is proof against even a reasonable prospect of a challenge in the court.

Finally, I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that wording matters. It can matter quite strongly in the case of a Bill such as this one.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I share the sympathy that has been expressed for the families of the victims who are behind the motivation for the Bill.

I looked carefully at the background to this issue to see what effect—[Inaudible]—stage had on the Bill to see if there is a necessity for the amendments that are proposed today. I examined paragraphs 32 and 33 of the Explanatory Notes, which say, among other things:

“The proposed change is to put Parole Board practice on a statutory footing … the Bill will not result in any change to current Parole Board practice and it is not anticipated that there will be any impact on the prison population”.


I also listened carefully to the Minister, who, in effect, repeated that analysis in relation to today’s proceedings.

I share the view of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Garnier and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, that we should not interfere with sound parole practice if Parole Board practice is—[Inaudible]—the Parole Board would be much more transparent—[Inaudible]—subject to closed hearings, national security and certain views of—[Inaudible]—confidentiality could be heard in public. What have the Government done to obtain the views, on both this Bill and the amendments that were passed earlier, of the current deputy chair of the Parole Board, His Honour Peter Rook QC—a very experienced and admired judge—and his predecessor, the former High Court judge, Sir John Saunders? I have a suspicion that, if consulted, they would say, “Well, first of all, we would prefer Parole Board procedure to be kept flexible and not to be circumscribed in any way by this Bill”, which—[Inaudible]—any changes to Parole Board practice.

Secondly, I would expect them to say that attitudes to cases change over the years, and that the Parole Board must be a living instrument, dealing with applications—[Inaudible]—released from prison, often many years after the event. I think that I once prosecuted a defendant who was sentenced to a whole-life tariff, remains in prison on that tariff and has taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights at least once. He happens to be the person who—[Inaudible]—which was just mischief-making. That is another example of the flexibility that the Parole Board needs in order to take account of the activities and attitudes of people who have committed dreadful offences such as these.

My main point is that the Parole Board should retain its flexibility to deal with all these issues as part of the larger picture in each case. On balance, I feel that the Bill in its original form does that more successfully than the Bill would do with the amendments added.