Parole Board Hearings

8. What assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of Parole Board hearings on victims and their families.

We recognise that parole hearings can be traumatic for victims, and victim liaison officers can support them throughout the process. We are launching a victims’ code consultation, which will also give victims the opportunity to provide input as to what more can be done.

Members of James Bulger’s family are my constituents, and they are yet again facing the agony of another parole hearing for Jon Venables, an ordeal that continues to retraumatise them more than 30 years after James’s horrific murder. While Parole Board decisions are rightly independent, the system must command public confidence, so will the Minister give the Parole Board an overarching assessment of Venables’ current risk and tell the House what reviews of the automatic two-year parole hearing cycle are being considered?

My hon. Friend is a fine champion for her constituency, and has raised this case with both me and other Ministers on numerous occasions. Baroness Levitt, who is responsible for Parole Board hearings, will meet Ralph Bulger and his legal advisers this afternoon to discuss this very issue, and I am sure she will be able to offer some more substantive answers to my hon. Friend’s constituent’s question. I put on record my thanks to Ralph for his campaign, and am very happy to meet him or anyone else on this issue in due course.

There is an 82-year-old man who has been in prison for 38 years. He was convicted of murder, and the trial judge in 1989 said that this was “not a violent process” and gave him a life sentence with a 15-year tariff, which expired over 22 years ago. He is repeatedly described as an exemplary prisoner. Because he has maintained his innocence over the past 38 years, he has not attended the prerequisite courses that would require an acceptance of guilt, so the Parole Board assesses his risk to the public if he is released as “unmanageable”, which seems ludicrous. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the Parole Board’s repeated response to this situation and whether there should be some sort of system for those who maintain their innocence for a great number of years?

As the hon. Member is no doubt aware, I am unable to talk about the specifics of that case, but if she writes to me, I will make sure I get back to her with any details I am able to share.