Imprisonment for Public Protection Sentences

Beyond that, the Committee also proactively sought the perspective of all stakeholders affected by the sentence. That is why we took evidence from Lord Blunkett, who was the original architect of the scheme, and Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the former Lord Chief Justice. We also held private meetings and roundtables with affected parties, including people serving IPP sentences in the community, family members, legal professionals who have supported IPP prisoners, Parole Board members, prison and probation staff—it should be said that it is not easy for prison and probation staff to deal with people in this situation, and I suspect that there is also an injustice to them—and victims of IPP prisoners. I do accept that the victim’s perspective also has to be considered, so we deliberately and specifically sought victims’ views.

I thank all who took the time and effort to engage with our inquiry and to provide the evidence that underpinned our recommendations and conclusions. In particular, I thank Donna Mooney and Shirley Debono, both of whom gave oral evidence to us on behalf of the United Group for Reform of IPP. I think that some of the group are in the Public Gallery.

Donna Mooney shared with us the experience of her brother Tommy Nicol, who took his own life in 2015 following a second refusal of parole by the Parole Board. His tariff was four years; by then, he had already served six. Donna told us of the difficulties her brother Tommy faced in enrolling on courses that he needed to complete to demonstrate progression, and in accessing mental health support. He often told her and his family that his sentence was “psychological torture”.

Shirley Debono, whose son is a released IPP prisoner, told us that even those who have been released and are serving an IPP sentence in the community are immensely fearful of being recalled to prison. She described the licence conditions as “draining” and difficult to cope with. She said that her son had been afraid of the telephone in case it was the probation service calling. That is not a happy situation to put probation officers in, never mind anything else, including the difficulty that it causes people who are genuinely trying to rehabilitate themselves.

The Committee’s report considers the difficulties faced by IPP prisoners in progressing through sentences, and the psychological harm that that causes. Our evidence focused on actions that the Government should take to address the problem, and we began by considering the prison-based barriers to progression.

The psychological harm caused to individuals serving an IPP sentence was evidenced by a number of contributors to the inquiry, including those serving the sentence, family members and professionals who have experience of working with people who are serving the sentence. It was demonstrated clearly that rates of self-harm among IPP prisoners are high. Although it is good to see that the rate of self-harm thankfully reduced between the end of 2017 and the end of 2021, it is still almost double that for prisoners serving a determinate sentence. The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody told us that as of May 2021, of the 250 IPP prisoners who had died in custody since the sentence came into effect, 65 had taken their own lives.

The Committee recently took evidence from the former chair of that panel, Juliet Lyon CBE. She told us that nine people serving an IPP sentence died last year. She said:

“It is something one cannot afford to forget. The utter hopelessness of their position means it is very difficult for them to maintain any sense of future; it seems just utterly sad and hopeless.”

Juliet Lyon has served in post for a considerable time and has decades of experience in the criminal justice system. Her wise words ought to weigh heavily. Sadly, I was notified that only two days ago another young man serving an IPP prison sentence took his own life in His Majesty’s Prison Manchester. This is still happening all the time.

Given the psychological harm that ensues as a result of the sentence and the conditions attached, many have argued that assessing risk is more complicated than it is for other prisoners. We heard that mental health need and risk are sometimes conflated and that poor mental health may therefore become a barrier to release—although, ironically, it is the serving of the indeterminate sentence that has triggered that poor mental health, and we have a vicious circle.

We asked the Government what they are doing to expand the availability of courses, to reduce waiting lists and to ensure that IPP prisoners are held in the appropriate category of prison. That was a problem we found, too. We also asked that the Government publish a report that they had commissioned on the offender personality disorder pathway, and that they set out more generally how they will ensure that programmes deliver adequate outcomes.

The Government only partially accepted those recommendations. Their response noted that places on programmes and other interventions were disrupted by the pandemic. Of course I accept that, and many of the submissions we received from prisoners expressed concern about that too. In our ongoing inquiry into the prison workforce, we have also heard concerns about staffing pressures affecting prisoners’ access to courses. I hope the Minister will come back to us now that the pandemic is out of the way and set out in more detail what work is under way to ensure that IPP prisoners’ progression is not hindered by such circumstances—lack of access to courses and so on—which, in fairness, are beyond their control. And why, oh why, is it not possible for the Government to respond specifically to our request for the publication of the report on the offender personality disorder pathway? What is there to hide about it? Why can we not have it published?

We heard that, as well as the prison-based barriers to progression, people serving an IPP sentence also face barriers in the community on release. We have particular concerns about what we termed in our report the “recall merry-go-round”, which sees released IPP prisoners returned to prison following their release, in some cases time and time again. That is why we heard clear evidence that reducing the qualifying period to have the licence removed from 10 years to five years would go some way to restoring proportionality. If someone has been on an indeterminate sentence, persuaded the Parole Board that they can be safely released and been able to show, for five years, that they can stay out of trouble and move on, what is the magic in making them wait another five years, with these things hanging over their head, to reach 10 years?

The decision to recall an IPP prisoner is made by the probation service, and the reasons for recall vary. The Government’s position seems to be that they do not accept that offenders serving the sentence in the community are being recalled unnecessarily. In November last year, the then Lord Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), told us in oral evidence that, in the 12 months to the end of 2021, 34% of IPP recalls were the result of new offences, rather than—in his words, not mine—

“tripping up over onerous licence conditions.”

Well, first, he did not deal very much with the 66% for us. Secondly, even in relation to that 34%, when we asked how many of those charges resulted in further prosecution or conviction—some might have been dropped because there was never evidence to justify them, which happens in the system—the answer was that the Government do not know:

“the required data is not routinely collated”.

How can the Government insist that every recall of someone serving an IPP is necessary for public protection if they do not know the basic data? There is an underlying problem with the collection and use of data in the justice system anyway, and that is a particularly egregious example, if you will forgive my saying so, Mr Twigg. Perhaps the Minister could explain why that is the case, and what can be done to correct it?

I am glad the Government have asked the chief inspector of probation to conduct an independent thematic inspection on whether IPP recalls are necessary and proportionate. Certainly, we heard evidence all too often that there was something of a tick-box exercise in relation to some of the recalls, which really are not based on risk. Of course, where there is genuine risk, any person on licence—whether it is IPP or not—should be considered for recall, but the risk must be genuine; these things should not happen, as is the case sometimes, purely because of a failure in communications, or because of a failure to bear in mind that many people find it really difficult to get their lives back on track straightaway after such sentences. It will not be a straight, linear progression, and there does not seem to be enough recognition of that in the recall process. There are probably better ways in which we could keep a hold on people, technologically and otherwise, and track their movements and so on without the need for the nuclear option of recall, if I can put it that way.

That is why we particularly want to press the Government on why they have not taken on board our recommendation of going down to five years for the licence to be removed. It is worth saying that among those who said they would support a reduction from 10 years to five years was Martin Jones, the chief executive of the Parole Board. The people who deal with this themselves—the Government’s own experts—see the force in that, but the Government will not listen to them.

We were disappointed to see that the Government rejected that entirely, opting instead to review the policy and practice of suspending just the supervisory element after five years of good behaviour. It is a small step, but it really does not do justice to the evidence presented on that point. I hope we can have a fuller explanation of what their reasoning was, because it just is not apparent from their response. Let us also have the opportunity to think again about that. We presented the evidence base. Where is the Government’s?

Since June 2022, the Secretary of State has been required to automatically refer every eligible IPP prisoner to the Parole Board for licence termination at the 10-year point, and to do so in every subsequent year. I hope that that will help with the number of licences terminated, but I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on the number of referrals made since then and on how many licences have been terminated, because the intention may be good but we want to know whether it actually works in practice.

This is a long topic, and I want to make as much progress as I can to do it justice, so I will now turn to our main recommendation. When the IPP was abolished in 2012, that was because it was found to be unfair. In particular, it led to a lack of clarity and consistency in the way that two people who had committed the same crime might be sentenced, and to uncertainty for victims and families about when their assailants or family members might be released. In 2012, Parliament agreed that IPP sentences are fundamentally unjust, but there are still people serving them. Successive Governments acknowledged the problem, and there have been efforts by Members of both Houses to change the arrangements. Lord Blunkett was very frank with us when he expressed his profound regret at the setting up of the sentence. He said:

“I got it wrong. The Government now have the chance to get it right.”

I just hope the Government will.

On our key recommendation, although we can make various improvements to the process inside and outside prison, the real issue is that we have to bite the bullet and get rid of this irredeemably flawed system by enacting primary legislation, so that we can have a resentencing exercise for all prisoners still serving an IPP sentence on licence. That was clear from the evidence we had, and the recommendation was overwhelmingly supported. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, a former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, called resentencing the only “inevitable” outcome. He said:

“It is the only fair and just thing to do.”

That is why we made that call, and it was not made lightly. We recognise that there are concerns about resentencing, particularly for victims of crime, who have perfectly valid concerns about making sure that there is no risk to them or their families. It should be said that we never envisaged that a resentencing exercise for determinate sentences would automatically mean that every IPP prisoner would be released. We have to be honest with IPP prisoners and their families and say that there will be some for whom a determinate sentence would necessarily be a long one, and that they would not necessarily be released immediately or in a short time. But many probably would be, and all of them, however long their determinate sentence, would have finality, some certainty and the prospect of some hope. In other words, they would have the basic fairness that everybody else gets in the prison system.

To deal with this difficult issue, we suggested having a small, expert and time-limited panel to advise on the shape that the primary legislation and the scheme might take. We did not try to draft it ourselves. All we were saying is that we need to balance protection of the public with justice for the individual offender—that is a basic principle of sentencing anyway—the need to preserve the independence of the judiciary and the need to ensure that we do not, even inadvertently, retrospectively increase a sentence. None of those, we believed, were impossible, and with expert support and political will all those things can be done.

Many people had great hope raised by that recommendation, and we had moving letters from prisoners about it. I am afraid that some of those hopes have been dashed by the nature of the Government’s report. They did not just reject our key recommendation on resentencing; they did so with such a scarcity of evidence to support their reasoning that, frankly, they demonstrated no engagement whatever with the evidence and reasoning behind our recommendation, and nor did they reflect on our efforts to explain the complexities of a resentencing exercise, including the risks to the public and how they could be overcome. The Government fell back on simplistic mantras, if I may say so. I am embarrassed to have to say that about a Government of my own party. It is not the way that I, as a Conservative, have normally treated these matters, and I do not believe that the Minister would either—he was not the person responsible for drafting the response. It is as shoddy a response as I have ever seen to a Select Committee report.

I am, however, pleased that the Government have followed through on their commitment to publish the IPP action plan, which came out two days ago. I welcome that, and I am grateful to the Minister for it. We look forward to engaging with him in taking it forward and seeing how it operates in practice.

I am sorry to have taken so much time to set out what I think is a compelling case. We are now in a position to move on. It is political will that is needed now. There is a new Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, who is someone who has considerable experience of the criminal justice system, so they know what prisons are like not just as a politician—there is nothing wrong with that—but as a lawyer who has been in practice for many years and who has dealt with the complexities of sentencing for many years. There is a chance for a fresh start and for the Government to say, “We will think again about this. We need to revisit our response. We need to recognise that we did not do justice to all the evidence presented to us.”

I know that the Minister, who is a fair man in all our dealings—I genuinely mean that—and a humane man, as is the Secretary of State, will want to go by the evidence, and there is now no obstacle to prevent them from doing that. I hope we will hear answers from the Minister to the specific concerns we have raised and also a sense that the Government are prepared to revisit something. There is no shame in saying, “We got this wrong.” There is no shame in Lord Blunkett saying, “I got it wrong. It was for the best of reasons, but I got it wrong.” There is massive credit in that. There would be no shame in the Government saying, “The response we gave was not up to scratch. We will go back and look again.” I hope they will reconsider, reflect and do that following this debate, and I hope the Minister will be able to signal to us that they are open-minded on that.

I am a member of the justice unions parliamentary group, which represents the Prison Officers Association and Napo. I am an honorary life member of the POA. There is no financial relationship between the POA and the Labour party—the only benefit would be an extra pillow if I ever get sentenced. We have discussed the issue with the unions involved—these are the people who are dealing with it hands on. What the POA says very clearly is that it does not usually comment on sentencing policy, but it has made an exception in this case. It feels it has been given a task, in dealing with these prisoners, that is impossible. It is impossible to deal with the hopelessness felt by these prisoners. In many instances, because of the overcrowding and the lack of access to the programmes that are required to support them, it is also almost impossible to keep them safe. That is why we have had so many self-harm injuries and suicides.

The POA supports the proposal put forward by the Select Committee. The same goes for Napo, which has also pointed out that the Parole Board cannot deal with this serious matter as promptly as it should because of understaffing. Every expert opinion that the Select Committee has sought, whether it is the lawyers, the prisons officers or the probation officers, says there has to be some form of shift. The proposal from the Select Committee Opposition on ensuring that there is at least an exploration of the resentencing exercise is therefore one that any Government should seize with both hands. A group of experts who can go through in detail the processes that could be undertaken is the light that any Government would want to see at the end of the tunnel in terms of resolving this matter.

Concern has been expressed that this will create a problem of mass release, but the Select Committee has addressed that. The expert committee can advise on the timing, the way this is dealt with and how the whole issue can be properly resourced and timetabled to maximum effect, to the benefit of not only the prisoners currently serving indefinite sentences but the victims and the wider community. This is a way forward, and I hope the new administration and the new Minister can seize the opportunity; otherwise, we could be here in another 10 or 15 years’ time, and more prisoners will have lost their lives or suffered harm, and more families will have suffered.

On behalf of the constituents I have dealt with and all the professionals I link up with through the justice unions parliamentary group, I urge the Minister to see that now is the time to act. I believe that the Minister would have cross-party support in that; it would not be a political issue for banter or anything like that—it would fall into line with the cross-party approach that the Justice Committee has undertaken so successfully.

The figures bear this out. When the Secretary of State appeared before the Justice Committee, 66% of the people who had been recalled had not committed a further offence. Why were 66% of them still in prison if they had not committed an offence? The reason is that for many of those individuals, the Probation Service and the Parole Board take an overcautious, scattergun approach. IPP prisoners are treated differently from other prisoners—I do not know what the reason is, but they are.

To justify that and to ensure that backs are covered, we put in place lots of conditions, most of which have no relation to risk. Risk is the risk of harm to other members of the public. If someone breaches a curfew, why are they getting sent back to prison? That is not evidence of a risk of harm. It is an indictment of the Government’s response on this issue that there has been no evidence base to challenge any of the questions that were raised by experts, members of the Committee and others—none.

What could possibly be the reason for—as of 2022—2,892 people still being in prison on an IPP sentence? How can Parliament allow that, if Parliament views that sentencing exercise as unjust? More than 2,800 people are in prison serving a sentence that Members of this House think is unjust. Can somebody explain how we can look one another in the face and allow that situation to continue? It is quite extraordinary.

Looking at the Government response, this cuts to the heart of what the Government are saying:

“The risks to public protection from the immediate release of serving IPP prisoners continue to exist. Although the Government recognises the frustrations and concerns surrounding the IPP sentence, our view is that the IPP Action Plan remains the best way in which these offenders can progress towards safe release.”

Not a shred of evidence is provided to back up that statement—not one. There is nothing. We are left in the uneasy situation where what we are actually keeping people in for is a concern, and it may well be a non-existent concern, but people’s lives are being blighted by politicians deciding that they do not want the risk of somebody coming out and doing something and then it being a headline in the newspaper. That is not the way to make policy. The justice system that I served for 20 years did not recognise that as justice. That is what this has come down to.

The response to the various things that my hon. Friend set out is just words on a piece of paper. We all know it, and there is that acceptance. I could read out numerous statements about the Government being committed to improving mental health support and rehabilitation support. I could have stood here and said that 10 years ago. If a Government are committed to trying to doing something, it means that they are not actually doing it. It is an acceptance that the proper support—the rehabilitative support and the courses—that is needed for somebody to be released from prison does not actually exist. Not only is this sentence unjust, but we are not providing pathways out for people with mental health difficulties.

The Minister—I like him very much—is an honourable man and an excellent Minister. How on earth have we got into this situation? As I said, Thomas is 39 years of age. He has been in custody for 11 years. Let us say that Thomas lives to the age of 70. If the basis for which somebody stays in custody is their mental health condition, which is deteriorating by the day, that would be another 31 years. He would be in prison for 40 years, having received a two-year sentence. People think that that is okay, seemingly, without any evidence of risk or anything.

That situation is repeated throughout this cohort of people. It is genuinely appalling. As my hon. Friend said, the Justice Committee’s report is not some radical document saying, “Open the doors and off we go”. It is an expert-based resentencing exercise, where some people may not be released from custody immediately, but at least they would have a determinate sentence that they and their families could have some hope to work towards.

We talk about the effect of these sentences, and I hope the Minister will take that into account. I could read out many facts, but the rate of self-harm among IPP prisoners is twice that of those serving a life sentence. Do we think that that happens by accident? The causal link through all the evidence is clear: the sentence is creating this situation. The deterioration of people’s mental health is a result of the sentence, and it is just appalling.

I am saddened to say this, because I believe that the Government are a force for good, but on this occasion, their response has left me exasperated. All of us who have been involved in the process have seen the personal stories of individuals and their family members. During my career in criminal law, one thing that I sometimes noticed was that we tended to treat people who were in a custodial environment as non-human beings. These are human beings with the same feelings, aspirations and desires for a house, for love and to have a positive and good life. We have created a situation where that has been cut off from them.

I will finish with this point, because I am going to keep to my 10 minutes, although I am tempted to go on for longer. With the change of personnel and with the new Lord Chancellor—a criminal barrister for many years—I think we all know that we should look at this afresh. We all know that we cannot have this situation going on in perpetuity, because we may as well book this room every five years and come back and say the same thing. What will happen is that more and more people will commit suicide and self-harm, and more lives and families will be destroyed, and for what? For a sentence that Parliament accepts is unjust. What other situation do we do that in?

Sometimes in Parliament, we talk about a lot of things and throw words around, but everyone accepts that this is unjust and yet we continue with it. I genuinely believe that this is a national scandal. It is a disgrace and a stain on the justice system in which I and my hon. Friend served. In the Justice Committee—with the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) as well—we have tried to come up with a responsible way of answering those concerns and of reflecting the personal and bespoke circumstances of each individual, and the views of victims, to ensure that public safety is part of the resentencing exercise that clearly needs to take place. Please, Minister, please, let us bring this farce to an end, accept the recommendations and give these people some hope.

Those varying approaches show that we must consider carefully how a resentencing programme would work. One solution would be to set up an expert committee to produce a report on the best way to run a resentencing exercise. That could include whether it is possible, and how it could be done in a way to protect public safety, to take the victim of the crime into account and to deal fairly with the offender. We should not forget why the need for reform matters so much—because we are discussing people’s lives, and those should be valued.

Last year, nine people serving IPP sentences committed suicide. That is the highest number since the sentence was introduced. Overall, 81 people serving IPP sentences have taken their own lives. They have committed suicide and we have heard about the impact of that on their family members. That is 81 lives lost because of shameful failures in our criminal justice system. This situation does not need to persist; no further lives need to be lost, although we have heard of one life being lost recently. As I said, each person’s life should be valued.

On face value, the Government have given up, locked the door and—it seems—thrown away the key for almost 3,000 prisoners currently serving IPP sentences. However, there is always time for change, and I hope that change will come. Of those 3,000 prisoners, almost half of them have been in prison for over 10 years following their original tariff. Is it any wonder that mental health problems, self-harm and suicide are so prevalent among those serving these sentences?

I remind the House, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst did, that IPP sentences were abolished in 2012. Napo states that its experience of people serving IPP sentences is that they generally

“tend to suffer from personality disorders, anxiety and depression and other mental health issues at a higher rate than other prisoners in the prison”

service. There is, therefore, a higher rate of self-harm and attempted suicide among these prisoners, which “impacts on” their

“ability to ‘behave’ in a way that is”

generally

“expected by the Parole Board and the Prison Service. As such they are denied release due to bad behaviour when in fact we should be looking at how imprisonment and the trauma this causes can escalate these behaviours. Many prisoners as a result are in a never-ending cycle.”

That is really important to note. These prisoners are already likely to suffer from some type of mental disorder, so they are more likely to have received this type of sentence when they are indeed vulnerable in other ways. This is an appalling state of affairs, and the Government can and should take steps to end it now. I would like to hear what the Minister says about how they will achieve that.

In 2018, I was contacted by a constituent whose son had been imprisoned in 2007 and is now serving an IPP sentence. Her son’s prison tariff was initially five years, but after 15 years he is still in prison. He has been repeatedly moved, or there have been threats that he will be moved, around prisons up and down our country. He is like a ghost in prison—he is moving from one prison to the next—and his mother repeatedly calls me to tell me where he is now. How demoralising and degrading this must feel to him. His situation has included him being moved away from his family, being denied contact with them and being denied emotional support. His parole hearing should have taken place on time, but, again, delay after delay has meant that his case is being deferred, because the necessary risk assessments and reports were not prepared in time. Indeed, sometimes no reason has been given for such delays. His mother is stricken with grief and often speaks to me on the phone, crying. I ask the Minister if he will review that case—in fact, all these cases need to be reviewed—and I know that that this man’s family in particular would appreciate that.

This man, like so many others, deserves a chance at reform, but our crumbling justice system—on the Government’s watch—is holding them back. Our prisons are overcrowded and the Minister has been forced to use police cells to hold prisoners. There are thousands of vacancies for prison officers across our country, but the Government do not publish full data on that, so we cannot properly understand the scale of the problem or how to tackle it. This means that many prisons are unable to offer a full and meaningful prison regime, with quality education and skills training, which are so crucial for those serving IPP sentences to show the Parole Board that they are safe to be released.

Almost the entire criminal justice system, from court to probation, is beset by backlogs, staff shortages and inexperienced staff. Even if a prisoner is released, probation officers are overstretched and cannot provide the support that they need. A litany of Government failures across the criminal justice system all indicate that the system is in crisis. Sadly, I fear that the Government are in denial about the scale of the challenge facing our justice service. Only if they own up to it and oversee the huge improvements that are needed will those serving IPP sentences get their chance at reform.

I hope that the Minister reflects strongly and responds to the issues that have been raised across this Chamber, and I look forward to his response.

In addition, prisons did not and still do not have adequate rehabilitation services, so prisoners are not able to access the interventions they need to demonstrate that they are no longer a risk and can be released. Like many other elements in this wretched piece of legislation, that defies belief.

In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights held that the failure to make appropriate provision for rehabilitative services for three prisoners serving IPP sentences breached their rights under article 5 of the European convention on human rights. The cumulative impact of IPP sentences on individuals’ welfare and their families is well documented and has been detailed today. Indeed, the then Government Minister described it in a 2010 session of Justice Questions as “not defensible”. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) voted against the legislation. He is always on the right side of history.

Even though the sentences were abolished in 2012, that provision does not apply retrospectively, as has been said, and so the impact continues for thousands of families. The mental health element is absolutely crucial. The mental health crisis among IPP prisoners is rife, with 81 suicides recorded among those serving IPP sentences since 2005, according to the United Group for Reform of IPP. Tragically, it has been reported that only yesterday a young man serving an IPP sentence took his own life at HMP Manchester.

Studies have shown that the family members of those given an IPP sentence suffer financial and emotional strain, hopelessness and a loss of faith in the justice system. Their children show separation anxiety, emotional distress and behavioural problems. I have witnessed that at first hand in families I have spoken to in my constituency. In one case—I will not provide the full details, for legal reasons—the constituent had rebuilt his life following release. However, he has now suddenly been recalled. The positive progress that he had made over those five years has been put on hold—for how long, we do not know. His livelihood, children and family are now terribly impacted because they have absolutely no clarity on how long he will be imprisoned for.

In a surgery last month, the mother of that prisoner broke down in my arms, crying. She just could not see an end to it, with the destruction of the life that he had built, the impact on the children and the family, with everything ripped away from them. In her words:

“IPP sentences have been abolished since 2012 but so many people and their families are still suffering from the injustice and lives are being utterly destroyed. When will this nightmare end for all of us?”

That is a question for the Minister.

Along with MPs from across the House, I am a signatory to early-day motion 591, which calls on the Government to implement the findings of the Justice Committee’s report, which has been outlined fantastically today, in particular that the Government quickly legislates to enable a resentencing exercise for all IPP-sentenced individuals, except for those who have successfully had their licence terminated.

The Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report rejected its primary recommendation on resentencing. Like everyone else, I ask the Minister to shed light on whether that will be looked at again by the new Secretary of State, following the dismay of families, campaigners, trade unions and the Justice Committee at the original response.

In a recent debate in Parliament on IPP sentences, we heard the former Home Secretary Lord Blunkett, who introduced the sentences, describe the current situation concerning IPP prisoners as unequal, unjust and immoral. It was good to hear him say those words. He acknowledged the mistake and the impact it has had on so many families. Former Supreme Court Justice Lord Brown has repeated his description of IPP sentences as the

“greatest single stain on the justice system”,

as has been mentioned throughout this debate, and that

“it is a deeper, growing stain because of the situation with the recalls.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 November 2021; Vol. 816, c. 33.]

The absurd and incredibly damaging situation with respect to the legacy of IPP sentences cannot continue. I plead with the Minister to rethink the Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report. I ask him to impress on the new Secretary of State the need to meet families, victims and campaigners in the next few weeks to discuss how we can repair the clear defects in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and, crucially, finally bring certainty to prisoners and their families about the nature of their detention and recall. We expect nothing else in this place. It is crucial that their words are listened to and adhered to.

Those issues are compounded by the fact that, after a decade of cuts to the justice system, prisons are now understaffed, overcrowded and awash with violence and drugs. In too many cases, prisoners are spending up to 23 hours a day in their cells, with little to no purposeful activity. In a system under such strain, IPP prisoners have often been placed right at the back of the queue. Many have been unable to address their offending because they have been denied access to the courses necessary to demonstrate their rehabilitation. In some cases, the courses they need simply do not exist in the prisons they are in; in other cases, lifers have been given support ahead of IPP prisoners. A lack of mental health support and awareness of neurodiverse conditions has also made it easier to stigmatise an inmate as a problem rather than offer them the support they need to reform.

Given those conditions, it is no wonder that so many IPP inmates and their families have lost hope, and the problems do not stop there. Recalls are rising. As the chief inspector of probation outlined, most recalls to prisons are for non-compliance with licence conditions, rather than for new crimes. Non-compliance often results from homelessness, a relapse into substance misuse and a lack of continuity of care between pre and post-release service provision. In short, failing services are leading to unsuccessful licences, which means that we are setting up too many IPP releases to fail. They are put back into custody in a system that sets them goals it does not allow them to meet.

Many IPP sentences were more a judgment on an individual’s chaotic life than their risk, making it near impossible for them to prove their suitability for release. For example, Charlotte was a 30-year-old drug addict when she was sentenced to a minimum of 16 months in prison. She had been begging outside a corner shop, and when a woman refused to give her money, she pulled out a knife. She did not attempt to stab the woman, but she did terrify her. Nine years later, in July 2016, she died in prison. It was an awful crime, of course, but a disproportionate outcome given that for threats with a weapon, the mandatory minimum sentence is six months’ custody and the maximum sentence is four years.

As we have heard today, there are some cases where the continued detention of individuals appears unduly harsh, given the nature of their original crime or the length of their original tariff. There have been resulting calls from those individuals’ families and justice organisations for reform of the system. Equally, there are a large number of individuals serving IPP sentences whose continued detention has rightly been deemed necessary for public protection by successive Parole Boards. That includes many sex offenders and violent criminals. Any blanket amnesty for those individuals, who include the black cab rapist, John Worboys, would create a serious and unacceptable risk to public safety. Various proposals have been made, including by the Justice Committee, about ways to address the potential unfairness of outstanding IPP sentences without exposing the public to the risk that would arise from releasing all those currently serving them.

Whatever party is in power, I believe it is paramount that we approach any discussion of reform on a cross-party basis, just as the Justice Committee did, consulting victims’ groups as well as justice organisations. We must avoid at all costs the future of those prisoners becoming a political football. On that basis, if the Government are willing to bring forward meaningful proposals on how to solve the situation, Labour will engage with them in a constructive, cross-party way. It is important that the Government understand that we are willing to work with them to move forward on this issue constructively. I am keen to hear the Minister’s response to that.

We must also recognise that problems do not just lie with IPPs. Even if individuals on IPP sentences are eventually released on licence by a Parole Board, to keep us safe we are still reliant on a functioning probation system to ensure those individuals comply with their licence conditions and do not lapse back into the behaviours that originally made them a risk. The precursor of any reform must therefore be a probation system that works, yet after 13 years of the Tories, the probation service is buckling at the seams. Under Labour, probation was well regarded and fulfilled its aims of keeping the public safe and rehabilitating those it supervised, but after more than a decade of underfunding and chaotic organisational change, which has led to many experienced staff leaving, it is today failing. Inspection report after inspection report detail systemic failures, and it is the public who pay the price with their safety.

There have been an average of six serious further offence convictions every week since 2010, including for murder, kidnap and rape. The reality is that our criminal justice system has been pushed to the brink, and if the Government were truly concerned about protecting public safety, they would urgently plug the gaps and rebuild the service they broke.

We all recognise the problems that IPP sentences have caused, but we must also recognise the numerous complexities surrounding them and the pressures on our stretched criminal justice system. I welcome the Department’s new leadership, and I hope the Government will seriously look at this issue again. If they bring forward proposals, we will engage with them in a constructive, cross-party way with the priority of public safety at the centre of that approach.

At the time of abolition, more than 6,000 offenders were serving an IPP sentence in prison. Since then a substantial number have been released on licence, so that at the end of March this year there were 2,916 offenders on an IPP sentence in custody. Although that is a significant decrease from the peak in 2012, I recognise that there is more to be done. I reaffirm the Government’s commitment to support those serving an IPP sentence, both in prison and on licence in the community, to work towards a safe and sustainable future release. We will continue this work through the updated IPP action plan.

I thank all members of the Justice Committee for their thorough work in examining the issues surrounding IPP sentences. The Government gave careful consideration to all the report’s findings and each of the Committee’s recommendations. We carefully considered the recommendations to undertake a full resentencing exercise of all remaining offenders serving an IPP sentence and to establish a time-limited expert committee to advise on the practical implementation of such an exercise, as the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) and others outlined. However, the Government’s priority remains the protection of the public, and any resentencing exercise that aims to provide each IPP prisoner with a definite release date would inevitably result in the immediate release of a considerable number of offenders who committed serious sexual or violent offences and whom the Parole Board has previously deemed unsafe to be released.