Imprisonment for Public Protection

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address the continued detention of individuals serving Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences beyond their original tariff periods.

In the two years since being in government, we have made significant progress to support IPP prisoners. We have reduced the number of never-released IPP prisoners by 21% and the number of IPP offenders in the community by 70%. IPP recalls fell by 31% in 2025 compared to 2024, and we have also changed the law through the Sentencing Act. Around 100 IPP offenders became eligible for earlier licence termination when these changes were implemented on 1 June.

My Lords, as the Minister has just confirmed, he said in the exchange with us on July 6:

“Noble Lords who know me will know that I do not lack ambition”.—[Official Report, 6/7/26; col. 11.]

He has again shown that is true. However, the pace of release of IPP prisoners is still too slow. Prospective new Prime Minister Andy Burnham spoke on Tuesday in the other place of the need to

“change the way this country thinks about and works towards justice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/26; col. 891.]

After this clarion call, does the Minister expect the new Government to match his ambition with greater resources, resolve and courage, so that by 2029 at the very latest the legacy of the shameful injustice of IPP sentences will be no more?

The noble Baroness will not be surprised that everybody I meet in prisons and probation, and around the whole justice sector, is ambitious for IPP prisoners. We are committed to ensuring that they get the support they need to progress. I am still ambitious, so that is why we are supporting the hardest to reach, especially IPP prisoners, those who we know are really stuck in the system. We are trialling a new IPP advocate role and giving IPP prisoners more experiences so they can progress, with specialists working with them, and when they go to approved premises, they are staying there longer and have more support. All these initiatives will help, but we need to remain ambitious, because I know, as many of us do, that IPP prisoners can get through. Having employed many of them myself, I believe in second chances and that they can get through.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, if IPP prisoners beyond their tariff had been sentenced to a determinate term, which they would have been if they had had the good fortune to have been convicted on or after Monday 3 December 2012 and not before that date, they would have been released years ago?

It is possible that some of these offenders may have been given a discretionary life sentence and therefore would still be subject to the parole process and therefore still in prison if they had not the met the statutory release test. It is also possible that some of these offenders may have been given standard determinate sentences and therefore could have been released by now. However, all IPP offenders are subject to review by the independent Parole Board, which has, in some cases repeatedly, found them unsafe to be released.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there are now about 1,000 IPP prisoners still in custody and, of that 1,000, only about 50 are unsuitable for release at any time, by virtue of either their health or the seriousness of the criminal offence for which they were convicted? Does it not seem right that we should make an aggressive effort to release some of those 950 and require the Parole Board and those in charge of early release to concentrate on them rather than, for example, child rapists or other forms of sexual criminal?

The noble and learned Lord is incorrect: 896 IPP prisoners have never been released; that is 11% down on last year. My view is that we need to get them into the right prison. Two years ago, only 70% of them were in the right prison; now 91% are in the right prison, and we need to support them so they can get out. Prisons like HMP Grendon, which is a therapeutic community, do good work with IPP prisoners, and HMP Warren Hill has specialist units to support them. I want them to progress as quickly as possible but as safely as possible, so when they are out, they can stay out and do so safely.

My Lords, in his maiden speech in the other place, in relation to the Hillsborough law, Andy Burnham talked passionately about miscarriages of justice, as we have heard. He also commended victims’ families for campaigning for decades against state wrongs. Taking him at his word, will the Minister draw the new Prime Minister’s attention to the IPP scandal and suggest meeting IPP prisoners’ families to hear details of this shameful blight, on their lives and on the criminal justice system, and to hear their frustration when the state unfairly cites dangerousness as an excuse while releasing proven dangerous rapists early to solve an estate mismanagement problem—that is, prison overcrowding? They want to talk to people in power about this; the new Prime Minister is perfect. Please facilitate the introduction.

I am glad the noble Baroness thinks that the new Prime Minister will be perfect. I was pleased to see the noble Baroness yesterday outside the Ministry of Justice with a number of ex-IPP prisoners and their families. I reiterate the important role that families play in the justice system. There are 193,000 children affected by parental imprisonment and a number of those are children whose parents are on IPP sentences. Some have come home and are then recalled back into custody. One of the key elements for people reforming and not reoffending is family ties. Yes, they need a job and somewhere safe to live, and we want them to be well, but families have a really important role, which is why we need to keep supporting the families of IPP prisoners.

I commend my noble friend for the enormous amount of work, time and energy that he is putting into this area. I know it is greatly appreciated by those who have campaigned for years. Will he take a look at the slowing of the work on progression plans and the progression board, not simply in relation to those who have never been released—the 896 to whom he referred—but on the length of time that those who have been recalled are spending in prison, which is of considerable concern in terms of what we are trying to do to rehabilitate and get people back into the community?

I thank my noble friend for his kind words, and I look forward to seeing a number of noble Lords at the IPP Peers meeting on Monday. I will take away the point on the progression board that he mentions. However, I reiterate that we need prisons that work and a Probation Service that works. One of the things that I been focused on is performance in the justice system. I am pleased to inform Members of your Lordships’ House that 70% of our prisons and 90% of our probation regions are now performing better than they were. Self-harm and assaults on staff are down. To me, all that shows that we are getting to the right place, which will make it easier for often complex prisoners to get on so they can get out and stay out.

Will the noble Lord say how many IPP prisoners he has met and talked to within the last four weeks, and what he has learned from those conversations?

The last IPP prisoner I met was in HMP Birmingham—I think I was there three weeks ago. He was back on recall and facing further charges. The nature of the conversation was quite troubling, because I learned from him that he felt safer in prison than in the community. Also, he did not think that open prisons were always that good for long-term complex prisoners, which surprised me because I am a big fan of open prisons, having recruited lots of people from them. I went away with the challenge of how we ensure that IPP prisoners, when they go to open conditions, are not brought back. Too many go there quite quickly and then come back.

My Lords, the Government’s recent report, published last week, acknowledges the obvious point that self-harm, violence and behavioural instability among IPP prisoners are linked to the long-term distress caused by the sentence itself, yet those very reactions may be liable to be relied upon as grounds to refuse release. Does the Minister consider that additional assessments and, indeed, progression plans are going to be sufficient to break that terrible cycle, or is more needed? Are we not required to be a little more courageous about the release of these long-term prisoners?

The noble and learned Lord is right to bring this up because they are often the most complex individuals in our whole prison estate. The level of self-harm among this cohort can be pretty terrifying. There are a significant number of IPP prisoners in secure mental health hospitals, and that is the right place for them. However, we need to ensure that we have them in the right prison. As I mentioned, HMP Grendon and HMP Warren Hill are therapeutically informed environments, and the Phoenix wing we are starting next month in HMP Aylesbury is a specialist wing where we are trying things we have never tried before. The people we call our “red rated” are those who are the furthest away from release and they are often the most challenging IPP prisoners. We need to get progression support around them and give them hope, because we need them to believe that they can get out—too many times they have seen people go to progression panels and not get out. We need to make sure we do what we can to give them hope.