Parole Board: Judicial Review

(asked on 6th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many serving prisoners have taken the Parole Board to a Judicial Review in each of the last five years.


Answered by
 Portrait
Rory Stewart
This question was answered on 14th February 2019

The numbers of all legal challenges and complaints made against the Parole Board in the years 2013/14 to 2017/18 can be found in the Parole Board’s Annual Report & Accounts for 2017/18 published on 18 July 2018. All judicial review claims except one in 2017/18 were made by prisoners:

Year

Judicial reviews brought by prisoners:

2013/14

76

2014/15

49

2015/16

36

2016/17

26

2017/18

30 (31 in total for the year)

The Parole Board has adopted a litigation strategy which reflects its role as a court like body. When a challenge is made to the merits of a decision, and the Parole Board does not think a new referral is needed, the Board will take a neutral stance in the judicial review. If the challenge is given permission to proceed, the High Court will then review the decision on its own merits. The Secretary of State announced on 4 February 2019 that, following a public consultation, the Government intends to create a reconsideration mechanism to allow for Parole Board decisions in certain circumstances to be looked at again if they appear to be fundamentally flawed. A prisoner will be able to apply for their case to be reconsidered if they think the decision was unlawful. The reconsideration mechanism, which will also be accessible by victims via the Secretary of State, will allow for legally flawed decisions – in the rare cases that may occur – to be corrected without the need to pursue a costly and time-consuming judicial review.

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