Imprisonment for Public Protection Scheme

Lord Trevethin and Oaksey Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trevethin and Oaksey (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble and learned Lord. I read yesterday his judgment in the Roberts case in 2016, in which the Court of Appeal described the circumstances of various offences which had led to the imposition of IPP sentences in the relevant period. The court, for the reasons explained in its decision, had to reject the appeals because they were not good as a matter of law, but I was left reflecting that those individual offenders had committed offences that were certainly serious—they were not trivial—but far from being the most serious types of offence that come before the courts. Those offenders, if still in prison, and some may well be, would have been sitting in prison now for 15 years or so watching other offenders come and go. These other offenders who had committed markedly more serious offences and have since been released while they remain in prison, unable to obtain parole for a number of reasons powerfully and devastatingly set out in the House of Commons committee report.

Coming for the first time to understanding the detail of this shocking state of affairs, the reasons, it strikes me, include the following. First, an outrageous lack of resource was made available following the imposition of this new and strange regime. Secondly, the striking fact, as given in evidence by a number of prisoners, is that prison is sometimes not an easy place to demonstrate that one is of a peaceful disposition. It is sometimes a place in which it is unwise to make that claim to your fellow inmates. Thirdly, and most troubling of all, is the fact made so strikingly in this report that this regime, with its unfair and cruel imposition of potentially indeterminate imprisonment, has itself impaired the mental health of many of these prisoners in a way that has made it even more difficult for them to satisfy the Parole Board release test.

I think there are still around 3,000 IPP prisoners in prison. That is a shade over a third of all those subjected to these sentences in the first place. That is a lot of prisoners. Apart from the possibility of a resentencing exercise, which I can see will generate problems, but may well be inevitable—if it is going to happen, it should happen now—there is one possibility that I respectfully ask the Minister to consider in his response. It is that canvassed by the committee report, namely using the power under Section 128 of the LASPO Act 2012 to reverse the burden of proof for IPP prisoners when they make their applications to the Parole Board so that the burden rests on, as it were, the state to demonstrate that the relevant prisoner remains dangerous. That would reduce some of the current unfairness.