Parole System: Public Protection

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I totally understand the point that my right hon. Friend makes. In truth, parole is about risk and, rightly, public protection. Either the tariff or the overall sentence should deal with the element of punishment, rather than parole. Nevertheless, my right hon. Friend makes an important point. He will know that whether it was Harper’s law, Tony’s law or the wider reforms to sentencing that we are making in the PCSC Bill, we have strengthened sentencing, in the teeth of opposition from Opposition Members.

In fairness, I do need to draw a distinction in respect of the reforms I have set out: they are really about public protection and the amorphous concept of risk in these cases. That itself also goes to the issue of public confidence in relation to the tariff and the punishment element that my right hon. Friend mentioned. Both are important, but with parole we focus on risk. I say that because I want to be clear that we are not adding another sentence on top of a sentence. The question, from the point at which an offender becomes eligible for parole, is whether they satisfy the statutory criteria. Is it safe to release them, or do they present an ongoing risk to public protection? That is the core focus of the reforms I have announced today, but I heed my right hon. Friend’s wider point.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and welcome the broad thrust of his recommendations. I notice that the second reform deals with the assessment of risk. The Secretary of State’s proposal is to employ more people with a law and order background, which I am quite happy to accept. I also notice that the report by the charity Justice published in January this year recommended:

“Enhancing the Parole Board’s programme of training to include”—

among other things—

“critical analyses of offending behaviour programmes and risk management tools”.

Does the Secretary of State have any plans to take that recommendation on board?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his constructive and reasonable question. We will look at everything on training. The truth is that the members of the Parole Board come with a vast depth of experience; my question is whether we have the range right. Psychiatrists and psychologists have a critical role to play, and judges and lawyers inform the process, but if we say that our overriding focus is public protection and we have finely balanced questions of risk in relation to people who have committed a so-called index offence many years previously, I would have thought that, particularly for top-tier cases, the public would want to know that the grizzled police officer, for example, who has seen such cases before and knows the pattern of behaviour is also there to provide that dimension of critical thinking.

The hon. Gentleman is right in what he says about critical thinking. We need to make sure that the Parole Board panels, particularly for the serious, top-tier cohort, have a broad diversity of experience so that we can take a precautionary approach and protect the public.