Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

What we want to do is to begin to transfer responsibility to local authority areas, so that they begin to appreciate the cost of custody. At the moment, youth custody is extremely expensive, but it comes as a free good to local authorities. We want to incentivise them to deliver earlier intervention to divert people away from custody and, indeed, from youth crime in the first place.

[Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

17. How many prisoners serving indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection have been released to date.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

As at 17 November 2010, 187 prisoners had been released into the community from indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection or detention for public protection, including offenders who have subsequently been recalled to custody.

[Mark Lancaster]

I am grateful for the answer, but it highlights the logjam that IPP prisoners are causing in our prison system, so how does the Minister intend to address that problem?

[Mr Blunt]

When those sentences were introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and implemented in 2005, the then Government estimated that there would be 900 such prisoners; there are now more than 6,000, and more than 3,000 of them are beyond tariff. [Interruption.] I can understand why the shadow Justice Secretary is ashamed of the record in that area. That is why there has been an increase in the size of the Parole Board; and that is why we are consulting on proposals to raise the tariff to a 10-year determinate sentence before an IPP can be enforced, and to examine the Parole Board test. Those are the proposals in the Green Paper on which we are consulting.