Imprisonment for Public Protection (Re-sentencing) Bill [HL]

Second Reading

Moved by

That the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, it is a great honour to open this debate today and to lead this important legislative campaign to abolish, once and for all, the great injustice that is imprisonment for public protection—or IPP sentences.

Parliament abolished IPP sentences on human rights grounds in 2012 but not, unfortunately, retrospectively, leaving thousands stuck with no hope and serving long, long-discredited, sentences. At least 90 prisoners have taken their own lives. Some are now free, both from prison and from licence in the community, having jumped through the right hoops—at least those who were fortunate enough to have the hoops to jump through.

I pay tribute, though, to the previous Lord Chancellor, and the current one, for making significant changes to shorten the licence period, ending this living nightmare for around 1,800 former IPP prisoners earlier this month. But many prisoners are still living this nightmare, and it is those people who I focus my Bill on, which quite simply seeks to convert these never-ending IPP torture sentences into regular, normal, determinate sentences with an end date, giving them hope.

There are three groups we are concerned with here. The first is the never released IPP prisoners, of which there were 1,095 at the end of September this year. The second is the recalled 1,600 people who the Parole Board has at one point considered safe for release, but who have since been recalled to prison due to a licence breach, though in the majority of cases for no further offence. They now need again to prove to the board, 18 months or more into the future, that they will still be safe for release. The third is those now out on licence—around 1,200 people currently considered safe by the Parole Board, yet still living in a state of fear and paranoia about recall to custody.

My Bill seeks to resentence all three groups eventually, along the lines suggested by the Justice Committee in the other place back in 2022. In fact, the Bill mirrors the amendment first moved by the committee’s widely respected former chair, Sir Bob Neill, to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, and then in your Lordships’ House by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.

As your Lordships will no doubt be aware, resentencing was described by the committee as,

“the only way to address the unique injustice caused by the IPP sentence”.

Crucially, the committee also recommended setting up

“a time-limited small expert committee to advise on the practical implementation of the resentencing exercise in conjunction with the senior judiciary”.

The role of the expert advisory committee is extremely important but rarely, if ever, acknowledged by the Government. I sincerely hope the Minister will address this concern. The expert committee, hand-picked by the Government, alongside the judge nominated by the Lord Chief Justice, would be free to explore all options for resentencing and to make suggestions for how this could indeed be achieved, balancing the important fundamental principle of justice with the importance of public protection. My Bill then calls on the Government to enact legislation to enable this resentencing to take place for all three groups, but in whatever order the committee advises, perhaps prioritising those with the shortest tariff or the longest time over tariff.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust and as an unashamed admirer of my good friend the Minister for all that he did as chairman of the PRT and as chief executive of Timpson, before he became Prisons Minister, in advancing the cause of prison reform and the welfare of prisoners and former prisoners.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for his thoughtful and thought-provoking speech in support of his Bill, and I thank him for his Bill which provides us with an early opportunity in the tenure of this Government to debate the troubling issue of IPP sentences. Several of us—I see a number of others in their places in your Lordships’ House this morning—have been hammering away about this subject for many years. Although, thanks to the previous Lord Chancellor, my good friend Alex Chalk, some progress in bringing this brutal regime to an end has been made, it is fair to say that finishing the work that began with the abolition of the sentence in 2012 still looks some way off.

The latest MoJ figures from September 2024 tell us that there 1,095 offenders serving an IPP sentence who have never been released from prison on licence. Of these unreleased prisoners who have served their minimum tariff, about two-thirds have been held for more than 10 years beyond their tariff. There are, as the noble Lord mentioned a moment ago, almost 1,600—the number is 1,599—offenders subject to IPP sentences who are in prison on recall.

The English language is a rich one, but even it runs short of adjectives to describe the disgusting state of affairs that is described by people being recalled to prison for an indefinite period for minor breaches of their licences, having already been released many years after the tariff has expired. We must stop recalling people who have committed trivial or non-serious breaches of their licence.

Time does not permit me to set out the whole litany of disgraceful aspects of the IPP regime. For present purposes, while I can concede that there will be political and practical difficulties and risks for the Government, and additional burdens for the court, in having to administer a resentencing exercise for the 2,700 or so IPP prisoners in custody and the hundreds, if not thousands, of others out on licence, saying that it is all too difficult and that we can improve things only at a risk-averse glacial pace is unacceptable, inhumane and uncivilised. If the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who I am delighted to see in his place, the Labour Home Secretary who legislated for IPP 20 years ago, can bravely speak up for the need for reform, the current Labour Government should have the courage and decency to bring this miserable saga to an end without delay. As the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, indicated, resentencing does not necessarily mean immediate release from custody or licence restrictions in every case, although I suspect that in about 90% of cases that should be the result.

My Lords, I echo the closing remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, when I ask how many scandals have to be endured by the citizens of this country before a Government finally say, “No, we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the Post Office Horizon scandal or Windrush or infected blood or Hillsborough or Grenfell. We are going to act to right wrongs and address horrendous injustices”.

The very welcome initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, in proposing this Bill deserves nothing less than a fully positive response from the Government. There is no excuse for not giving one. We are told that so far they have copied the previous Government in refusing to countenance the resentencing solution recommended so forcefully by the Justice Committee in the other place in its 2022 report because they are concerned about dangerous prisoners being released. The admirable then chairman of that committee, Tory Sir Bob Neill, has been followed in the chair by Labour’s Andy Slaughter, who also says that addressing the IPP scandal is a priority.

The first reason to effect change is the very simple and straightforward ethical and moral argument of justice. The Government need to find a backbone. Those behind bars include James Lawrence, who has served almost 18 years after being originally sentenced to just eight months—25 times over his original tariff. Ninety IPP prisoners have committed suicide, as the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, mentioned. One man set himself alight and another went on hunger strike for 61 days in protest at his plight, which has rightly been called Kafkaesque. Labour’s Bambos Charalambous told the other place in a debate he initiated two weeks ago of

“the heightened risk of self-harm and suicide that IPP prisoners face as a result of their hopelessness and their perpetual state of anxiety at the prospect of additional years in prison”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/10/24; col. 223WH.]

My Lords, so far we are all in agreement, and we thank the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, for proposing this Bill. Earlier this year, around April, I met a man called Mike at a Harrow youth centre that I had been asked to open. Mike sat me down to remind me that I had met him in autumn last year when he was in a category C prison, and he was delighted to remind me of the details. Last year he had spent nearly 10 months on recall, having been released from an IPP sentence 17 years earlier, as he had forgotten to inform a probation officer that he was taking his wife on holiday in August 2022. As a result of that simple lapse of information, the Probation Service had him recalled to prison. What a waste of public money. What a scandalous destruction of a marriage opportunity. What a pernicious persecution of an individual’s hard-earned freedom for a simple act many decades earlier.

That is exactly why the IPP sentence is so evil and pernicious, and we thank God that the last Government had the guts in their earlier iterations to remove it—albeit not the stamina to deal with the stain of those who remain in prison, nor to end the permanent persecution of those who are outside wondering when the doorbell will ring or a tap on the shoulder will come for some suggestion that they have forgotten an aspect of their sentencing duty. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, said, this is simply psychological torture. It is unacceptable, it is evil and it should not be in our justice system. In fact, it shows us as having an injustice system.

I am wholly supportive of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Woodley. As he suggests, it could be amended on one or two minor points but, frankly, we have gone round this circus too many times. The Government would show guts by simply accepting the Bill. I say to my friend the noble Lord, Lord Timpson: accept the Bill, and then we can deal with amendments brought forward by the Government, if necessary. Let us get the process through and then we can all be proud of the fact that Members both in the other place and here have resolved this painful and unnecessary persecution of people who deserve better than all this.

My Lords, I add my voice in favour of the Bill, and say amen to all that I have heard. I declare an interest as the Anglican bishop for prisons in England and Wales. I an not going to repeat all that has been said regarding the shocking statistics that have already been outlined.

Like other noble Lords, I am glad that such sentences can no longer be given and that there have been some changes in the rules around the termination of licences, but those rules are complicated and not easy to navigate. That is particularly significant when it comes to offering hope and support not only to those serving their sentences but to families and friends as well.

At the heart of the Christian gospel is a living hope and a God who, in Jesus Christ, embodies both justice and mercy. The IPP sentence reflects neither justice nor mercy and does not offer hope. When I visit male prisons in particular, I can guarantee that the issue of IPP sentences will nearly always be raised by prisoners, officers and chaplains because of the reality of what is being experienced. Anyone who visits a prison and meets those serving IPP sentences will be struck by the sense of uncertainty, hopelessness and injustice and the impact that it has not only on individuals but on the wider prison and on families on the outside. Surely that is also not helpful for the victims of crime.

When there are people in cells watching those alongside them working towards a clear release date, while the person serving the IPP sentence has no such clarity and may remain in prison for longer than the person who seemingly committed a more serious offence, that of course seriously affects the well-being of the individual. It raises levels of anxiety, hopelessness and alienation, which impacts a wider prison environment and puts pressure on staff. I see and hear again and again the deterioration in mental well-being of those serving IPP sentences, which, ironically, leads to situations that then have an adverse effect on their sentence because of their outbursts of behaviour due to anger, frustration and hopelessness. The cycle is indeed vicious.

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Woodley on bringing this Bill forward and on his powerful speech. Many points have been made this morning that we have made before in this House and will make again until we reach a conclusion and can put this tragedy—for that is what it is—behind us.

I have been pleased that the Minister has taken action, with the support of his colleagues, very quickly to implement the changes that were agreed in the Victims and Prisoners Act, not least, on 1 November, the lifting of the sword of Damocles in relation to licence conditions; the further action that will be taken in February; the framework that was published last week, which helps towards the progression that we all want; and, shortly, the action plan that I hope will have been not refreshed but completely revised. I would be grateful if the Minister would tell us when that is likely to be published, because it will be really important in dealing with some of the issues and the tragic cases that have been mentioned already today.

If the Government feel that they cannot do a wholesale resentencing, for the reasons that the previous Administration and my own Government have spelled out already, there may be a halfway house. It may be possible—I know that my noble friend Lord Woodley will have spoken to Nicholas Cooke KC about this, as I have—that we could pull together a panel of retired judges and senior KCs. I say retired because there is a backlog of 65,000 in the Crown Courts at the moment, so the judiciary is stretched beyond belief. Realistically, speaking as someone who, with good and bad outcomes, had responsibility for the judicial system and sentencing all those years ago, I know the pressure that the Government are under. Still, it might be possible to do a sifting job—one already being done in miniature by cases being referred back. Members of this House will have heard of the Doughty Street Chambers. How could we not? It has been successful on a number of occasions recently where it has returned to the cases all those years ago and the way the judiciary dealt with them. I carried my responsibility heavily, and I hope that sometimes the judges themselves will think about why they did not see IPP as part of a menu. Doughty Street Chambers has been able to reopen those cases and get them rejudged.

My Lords, I declare my interest as I am also a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust.

I welcome the progress that is being made by the Ministry of Justice in automatically terminating the IPP licences of around two-thirds of those on licence as of March 2024. But we are still talking about more than a thousand IPP prisoners who have never been released, and more than 1,500 who are in prison having been recalled, which I find deeply troubling. We are all familiar with the injustice at the heart of this, but it bears constantly repeating. The offence was abolished in 2012 because Ministers recognised and declared that it was unfair, yet, shockingly, no transitional provision was made for existing IPP prisoners serving this unfair sentence, so we are faced today with three startling facts.

First, there are some IPP prisoners who are many years past their tariff and have even served longer than the maximum determinate sentence for the offence of which they were convicted. We heard many examples of this during the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Act. Secondly, it follows that if they had been sentenced after the sentence was abolished, most would have received a determinate term from which they would long ago have been released, whatever the perceived assessment of risk. What a lottery that is, yet the administration of fair justice should never depend on mere chance of this sort. Thirdly, and particularly egregiously, the Justice Committee heard expert evidence, published in its third report, that the psychological harm caused by the IPP sentence leads to not only greatly increased risks of suicide and self-harm, but to a perceived risk of reoffending which prevents release, irrespective of whether any risk remains from the original offence. This must be a bitter pill to swallow for the prisoners affected.

Not only has the state failed to apply the repeal of this unfair sentence to existing IPPs, but the effects of that unfairness for many IPPs, through no fault of their own, are preventing them being released because of the psychological damage that an unfair sentence has caused them. Their original offending behaviour and the risks associated with it have long since become irrelevant. It is not surprising that many of them have given up hope and stopped engaging with progression opportunities. The question is how to break this deadlock.

It is an honour to take part in this debate and to listen to the unanimous views. I predict what the remaining Back-Bench speakers’ line will be on the Bill. It is clear that the overwhelming spirit of this House is to support the Bill, introduced in such a powerful speech by my noble friend Lord Woodley.

The arguments have been made and there is no need to repeat them all. I would like to emphasise the mental health aspects of how this works. There is no doubt that the mental anguish caused by these indeterminate sentences is one of the cruellest aspects of the entire affair. Looking back to 2020, a report from the Prison Reform Trust, No Life, No Freedom, No Future, set out in graphic detail how the indeterminate nature of these sentences destroys people’s life chances and their mental health. They are fundamentally damaged by the way this cruel law operates.

A particularly concerning aspect is the way in which poor mental health works against those who are incarcerated. Instead of being seen as a need that has to be addressed, it is seen in certain circumstances as one of the factors that leads them to continue to be incarcerated. The lack of support to address these issues compounds the problem. I came across a statistic of particular concern. The prisoners are placed under a responsibility to demonstrate their innocence, effectively—that they are not going to commit another crime, even though it is always impossible to prove a negative. Yet some of them, one recent figure being 840 out of 2,800, are in prisons where they cannot undertake the work needed to prove that they can be released. The sheer cruelty of this policy has to be acknowledged.

I have no doubt that my noble friend the Minister is aware of all of this. He is hearing all our speeches and no doubt recognises this and, I suspect, fundamentally agrees. The Government have to be brave here. They will come under criticism and there will be hard cases; there is no doubt about that. But the Government need to be brave and adopt the approach set out by my noble friend Lord Woodley in his Bill.