My Lords, this Bill will stipulate in statute an obligation on the Parole Board to ensure that the non-disclosure of information is always considered when making a release assessment. The Bill will put established practice on a statutory footing and respond directly to real-life issues that have caused immense pain to the families of victims of serious crimes.
The Bill, sometimes referred to as “Helen’s Law”, is a result of the work of Helen’s mother, Marie McCourt, who has campaigned tirelessly for this change. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to Mrs McCourt’s resolve. It is in large part thanks to her that we have reached this point.
Helen McCourt was a 22 year-old insurance clerk from the village of Billinge, near St Helens in Merseyside. On the evening of 9 February 1988, Helen disappeared while on her way home from work. The following year, Ian Simms was convicted of Helen’s murder and ordered to serve a minimum of 16 years in prison. Ian Simms has since been released but has never revealed where Helen’s body is and, despite extensive searches, her remains have never been found. This has compounded the unimaginable suffering of the McCourt family.
We will all appreciate the closure and comfort that can come from laying a loved one to rest. The McCourt family, and others like them, have been wilfully and cruelly denied this comfort. Mrs McCourt has campaigned for a change in the law to represent this, to acknowledge the added distress this causes for the families of victims, and there is wide public support for such a change.
I would like to take a moment to reflect on another case which has shaped the development of the Bill. In 2009, Vanessa George was convicted for multiple counts of sexual abuse against children at the Plymouth nursery where she worked. She did not stop at the abuse of the children but photographed these horrendous acts in order to share them with other depraved individuals. Her abuse of the trust placed in her by the families of the children she was meant to care for and protect is truly shocking.
The pain felt by the victims and their families has been compounded by the fact that the children she photographed cannot be identified from the images she produced, and she has hitherto refused to disclose their identities. Many families who placed their trust in Vanessa George do not know, and may never know, if their children fell victim to her cruelty. She was released by the Parole Board after serving 10 years in prison.
When considering the release of an offender like Vanessa George or Ian Simms, the Parole Board must always take into account this withholding of such significant information. That is why we are legislating, through this Bill, to directly address this current gap, and to seek to bring some small solace to victims and families.
Clause 1 will amend the release provisions that apply to life sentences for murder and manslaughter, and sentences of imprisonment for public protection for manslaughter and the offence of taking or making indecent images of children. This places a statutory obligation upon the Parole Board to consider a non-disclosure of information about a victim’s remains or the identity of a victim in an indecent image when making a public protection decision, being a decision to release, about such a prisoner.
My Lords, I add my voice to the tributes paid to Marie McCourt. Her campaign to secure this legislation was formidable and supported by her local Member of Parliament, my honourable friend the Member for St Helens North, whose 10-minute rule Bill tabled in support of Marie’s campaign back in 2016 informed the legislation we have before us today.
The Bill has been a long time coming—in the other place it was noted that it has taken over three years, two general elections and two Prime Ministers for the Government to offer their own variation of Helen’s law—but thanks to the campaigners’ persistence and the Government’s constructive approach to this legislation, the Bill is now before us. It rightly has an enormous amount of cross-party support.
The first part of the Bill, introducing a new statutory obligation on the Parole Board to consider the non-disclosure of information about a victim’s remains when making a public protection decision, is a welcome step forward. It is not a “no body, no parole” Bill, so it is not everything the campaigners wanted, but it sends a clear message to Parole Board panels that the Government’s view is that a refusal to give information that can ease a relative’s pain, such as non-disclosure of remains, should be a significant factor in their decision-making.
In taking this legislation forward in practice, will guidance be issued to Parole Board panels on this new duty? For this legislation to work, it is vital that Parole Board panels view this new duty as a critical part of the eligibility criteria and not as a peripheral addition. How will the Government ensure that this happens? Even though it is not a “no body, no parole” Bill, that is the aim of this legislation, so will the impact of the legislation be subject to its own review?
I move briefly now to the second case that has shaped the Bill and to which the Minister referred: the horrific crimes of Vanessa George, who was convicted of multiple counts of sexual abuse against children at the Plymouth nursery where she worked. I pay tribute to my honourable friend the Member of Parliament for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, who has spoken out on behalf of the distressed parents of George’s child victims. To protect their children, the parents rightly wanted to stay private, so the support of their local MP has been critical, especially as he has ensured that this Bill includes a statutory obligation on the Parole Board to consider the non-disclosure of information about the identity of a child or children featured in such images.
My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in support of a Bill that is perhaps largely technical but one that has been shaped by and responds to the most profound and challenging of human experiences. I commend the Government for their manifesto commitment to the Bill and for progressing it to this stage, despite the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, I pay tribute to honourable Members in the other place who have championed its cause over several years, in particular the Member for St Helens North, Conor McGinn, and the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, Luke Pollard. Despite elections, changes of leadership, Brexit, Dissolutions and Prorogations, they have not allowed this issue to be sidelined.
I join in the tributes, which I know will continue, to Marie McCourt, whose tireless campaigning not only attracted nationwide support, but, as importantly, helped other families in similar situations to her own to realise that they were not alone. Her loss was unfathomable; her courage, tenacity and resolve over many decades is remarkable.
The Bill will be vital in helping bereaved families come to terms with their grief and to deal with what for most people will, mercifully, remain unimaginable. It will also be important in restating the Government’s commitment to the safety of our communities and their willingness to take steps, as and when they are necessary, to evolve institutions whose core function is to protect society.
The Bill enshrines in law what is already the practice in parole boards, which is to fully consider the failure by the prisoner to disclose information about the victim’s remains, or the identity of child victims of indecent imagery. Given this, on the surface it might appear to change little. However, it will make decisions more consistent and fair across the system. Importantly, it responds to the pleas of victims’ families, demonstrating that they have been heard. It means that the Parole Board no longer has discretion to disregard non-disclosure in making its decisions—a distinct change, and one that Parliament alone will have the power to reverse.
My Lords, I have read the debates on the Bill in the other place, and I can well understand the alacrity with which it was approved. I can also understand the sense of outrage and distress felt by those close to the victims of killers, be they convicted of murder or manslaughter, when they are denied knowledge of where their loved ones have been abandoned by the criminal. To be denied a funeral because the person responsible for the death will not tell the relevant authorities where the remains are unquestionably adds to the distress and grief of the family.
We know of the cases which have been the catalyst for the Bill. There will be, I have no doubt, examples of the heinous behaviour that predated the Moors murders in the 1960s. More recent cases have been cited and in all of them, the simple recitation of the killer’s name is enough to reawaken the revulsion and hideous sense of loss that these foul people have aggravated by refusing to disclose the whereabouts of their victim’s body. For the parents of children who may have been sexually abused, the horror they have to contend with in not knowing whether the convicted sex offender abused their child is only to some miniscule amount mitigated by their child being alive and with them at home. Imagine the fear these parents must harbour that later, in adolescence or adulthood, their child will be traumatised by remembering or coming to realise what happened to either them or their classmates many years before.
The Bill is designed to mark in public policy the revulsion that right-thinking members of society feel for these serious offenders who, not content with killing or abusing their victims, add to the pain and suffering of their victims’ families and friends by keeping secret information which, if they had a scintilla of remorse or empathy, they would give up to the police. No doubt there will be some killers and sex offenders who take a perverse pleasure in prolonging the agony caused by their crimes by refusing to say where they have abandoned the body of their victim, or withholding the identities of those whom they have abused.
My Lords, I first welcome my noble friend Lord Ponsonby to the Opposition Front Bench and make it clear that I fully support this Bill and its aims. I pay tribute to the campaigners, including, as we have heard, the McCourt family, led by Marie McCourt. They have sought this change to the legislation and, along with the families of the victims of Vanessa George, have enabled this to happen. It is thanks to them that the Bill is here. Hopefully, when it soon becomes an Act of Parliament, it will be able to give some comfort to the families of victims in future.
I also pay tribute, as have other noble Lords to my honourable friends in the other place—the Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport and for St Helens North—for their work campaigning with the families of victims, which has helped bring this legislation forward today. I also pay tribute to the Government for bringing the legislation forward, for putting it in their manifesto and following that through —we are all very pleased it is here. The Bill is fairly short, of course. It has two clauses that amend the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 and address the release of prisoners under the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, made a number of points. He is a respected lawyer and I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will respond to those points. These detailed questions of law need to be addressed and I hope we will get a response to them.
In respect of the crime of murder, as we have heard, the Bill brings into force provisions which have become known as Helen’s law. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, referred to that in his opening remarks. In responding to the debate, will he set out in more detail for the House how this process will work, compared to the guidance given to the Parole Board previously, and this new statutory obligation to consider the non-disclosure about a victim’s remains? Would the Parole Board always have considered this question—I think it probably would—or might it not have considered the non-disclosure of victim’s remains because it had the discretion not to consider that matter?
My Lords, I remind the House of my interest in the register as founder and chairman of Crime Concern, which gave birth to Victim Support. All of us agree that the Bill is much needed and timely. It may be simple in the paragraphs contained in it, but it is profoundly essential. It is a dignity measure for victims—a measure that strips bare those vindictive and harsh offenders who wish to hide behind their crimes and the mask that an illusion will eventually pass over our concerns. These vulgar and violent crimes cannot and should not be forgotten.
I am conscious that the seriousness and importance of this legislation reflects a great effort on the part of the Ministry of Justice and the Government to tighten the law. We cannot disagree, given the cases involved that have set the boundaries for the Bill, that it is vital and necessary. When the Minister comes to wrap up the debate, will he indicate whether the Government have an interest in bringing forward any further legislation to tighten up other aspects of the law on the release of prisoners? Whether they are appropriate or not, there may be further dimensions for consideration by the Parole Board, or even by those with wider sentencing or probation powers.
Yesterday, we heard in the other place that just 33 prisoners have been released out of the proposed 4,000 in the decision of the Ministry of Justice on 4 April. This would imply that the release procedure has gone wrong somewhere. We know that a few offenders were released and then recalled. It also suggests that the promise of release for good reason, as agreed by many in this House and the other place, as well as by public campaigners, means that sometimes too many people are allowed to languish for too long in our system. That is itself an element of injustice. How will the Government fulfil their responsibility, set out on 4 April, to release prisoners who pose no harm to wider society, in particular as they have done not only for pregnant women prisoners but for those with disabilities, of great age or who are suffering from other illnesses? Can the Minister comment on that aspect or, if it is not in his brief, will he write to the House? This is a matter of dignity. While the Bill is about dignity for victims, the entire criminal justice system needs to have that element of dignity about it.
My Lords, I would not imagine that there is anyone in this House who does not support this Bill; we extend our sympathy to those who sadly gave rise to it and our congratulations to those in the other House who have brought it this far. I fully support the Bill, but I have some questions, which I will address to the Minister and the House.
The briefing note says that the Bill puts into statute already established guidance for the Parole Board. The delegated powers memorandum says that where
“the offender has not disclosed the location of the victim’s remains, the Parole Board must take that into account in determining that prisoner’s suitability for release.”
I do not think that anyone could disagree with that, but it leads to the question: why is this necessary? Why do we need to guide the Parole Board—unless we believe that maybe it has lost its way?
If we are going to have greater transparency for the Parole Board, which I think is a good thing, we also need to know—from the Minister, I hope—when the review that was indicated in the Conservative Party manifesto is expected to report and to lead to some changes. It could be argued that part of the problem is, first, the personnel on the Parole Board, and, secondly, the omerta that surrounds much of its proceedings. Both of these things I have no answer for, but they need to be looked at.
I note that the Bill does not extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Is it envisaged that within the devolved Administrations settlement it will be discussed with them, with a view to then bringing matters into line?
The provisions for reviewing convictions also probably need to be looked at. As has been mentioned, some people in prison maintain very rigidly that they are innocent. They may be guilty but have convinced themselves that they are innocent, or they may think that they have been wronged. I am not against a tough system on release, but there has to be an adequate system for reviewing the convictions of those who maintain their innocence—at least the evidence should be looked at again. It is in no way a comparable series of offences, but one thinks of Guildford and Birmingham and the way in which miscarriages of justice were carried through in the past. It is possible, in a very febrile atmosphere, that a conviction might be upheld; the Parole Board may meet in secret but trials are conducted in public, and it is possible for people to be carried away.
My Lords, we all share the distress of the victims of the appalling crimes which have given rise to this Bill, and I associate myself with all the remarks that have been made in that regard. However, the key speech of this debate was made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, about how much the approach taken in the Bill changes things in practice. As he rightly said, all the Bill does is impose a statutory duty in place of the current requirement on the Parole Board to consider these matters in any event.
That being the case, will the Advocate-General tell us what difference in practice the Bill will make to the operation of the system? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, made the point very well that, given the public importance of these issues and the huge emotive and personal importance to the relatives of the victims, having a process in open court and creating a new statutory offence seems a more logical and justifiable way forward.
Perhaps I could ask a related question. Since it appears that this Bill does not change the way the Parole Board operates, might it be possible for relatives of the victims in question to address the Parole Board? Given that in the Bill Parliament is seeking to highlight one particular factor among others which the Parole Board must consider when deciding on release and the significance of that factor, might victims be allowed to address the Parole Board directly? Can the Minister say whether that was considered by the Government—and, if it was considered, why it has not been allowed?
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Clause 2 of the Bill effectively replicates what Clause 1 achieves but in relation to the release provisions that apply to an extended determinate sentence which has been imposed for manslaughter or the offence of taking or making indecent photographs of children. Functioning in the same way as Clause 1, it will place a statutory obligation on the Parole Board to consider the non-disclosure of information about the location of a victim’s remains or the identities of a child or children featured in indecent images when making a public protection decision, including a decision to release.
In order for the Bill to apply, the Parole Board must not know the location of a victim’s remains or the identity of a victim in an indecent image but must believe that the prisoner has information about this that they have not disclosed to the board. This is the essence of the prisoner’s non-disclosure, and it is this that must be taken into account by the board when assessing whether a prisoner can safely be released on licence.
Furthermore, the Parole Board must particularly take account of what, in its view, are the reasons for this non-disclosure. This subjective approach will enable the board to differentiate between circumstances such as when, for example, the non-disclosure is due to a prisoner’s mental illness, and cases when a prisoner makes a deliberate decision not to say where a victim’s remains are located.
Subjectivity is fundamental to the proper functioning of the Bill. It is for the Parole Board, as an independent, court-like body, to decide what bearing such information has on the risk that a prisoner may present and whether that risk can be managed safely in the community. The Bill reflects the established practice of the Parole Board but goes a step further and puts a legal duty on the board to take the non-disclosure into account.
While, as I have set out, the measures in this Bill may seem relatively small or technical, I cannot stress enough the importance of this Bill and the support it has from victims and families. The crimes of the likes of Ian Simms and Vanessa George are harrowing, and families affected by these crimes deserve the peace of some element of closure, whether that is the opportunity to lay a loved one to rest, or the certainty of whether or not they were abused. This Bill offers families and victims a chance to achieve that.
I hope that the “Helen’s Law” Bill will attract support from all sides of the House and enter into the statute book as soon as possible. I beg to move.
It is tragic that this legislation is not in place in time to deliver for the victims in the George case. She has refused to disclose to the authorities the identities of the children she photographed, but she has been released, so already distressed parents not knowing whether their children were abused will continue to live in fear, pain and concern for their children. At this point, we must acknowledge that for Marie McCourt, too, the timing of this Bill is heartbreaking, as Helen’s murderer has been released, as the Minister said, without providing information on her whereabouts.
It would be remiss not to mention in this Second Reading that much more needs to be done to support victims in the parole process. Can the Government give assurances that the needs and experiences of the victims will be put at the heart of the root and branch review of the parole system which the Government have promised?
The way in which victims give evidence to the Parole Board needs to be modernised. It is daunting for a victim or their family member to travel, sometimes hundreds of miles, to give evidence in the prison holding the abuser or murderer in question. Making victims go through the necessary security to read out their statement seems an undesirable way to treat them. Can the use of video conferencing from a local court be adopted as standard practice for Parole Board panels?
There is also a lack of support and help for victims in compiling and presenting their evidence to Parole Board panels, which should be addressed. Support and clear advice in plain English is particularly important if you are a young person having to give evidence.
Sadly, many of the parents involved in the George case found out about her release on Facebook or via the local paper. I am sure every effort was made to contact the parents in this instance, but in general the change of contact details over time and the opt-in approach of the victim contact scheme cause issues. Again, technology should be developed to modernise this scheme so that victims can opt in and opt out at any time and update their contact details easily. The Government should also consider changing the law so that victims are automatically included in the scheme unless they opt out. Will the Government consider that option?
Finally, measures to increase the transparency of how decisions are made and how the Parole Board works are to be welcomed. In this area, simple changes can take place without the need to wait for a review or legislation. For example, victims should be given the high-level summaries of decisions without having to apply for them.
Today’s Bill is a welcome and positive step in the right direction, but we have to do more to support victims in the parole process, and put mechanisms in place to make sure that the aim of the Bill becomes a reality and gives victims and their families the information they rightly seek.
The Bill can also be seen as part of a wider and necessary process to increase the efficiency, transparency and accountability of the parole system. The review of Parole Board Rules, presented to Parliament in February 2019, made welcome improvements, including enhanced engagement and communication with victims, the new reconsideration mechanism, and standard practice documents to ensure a more robust, transparent and consistent approach to decision-making.
The review also recognised the importance of ensuring a fair hearing for prisoners with mental health needs and learning disabilities, and noted the need for explicit provision in relation to
“the procedure that should be followed in cases where the prisoner is found to lack mental capacity to participate in the parole process.”
I would welcome reassurance from the Minister that he is content that the need for this explicit provision for prisoners lacking mental capacity is adequately addressed in new Section 28A(2), which states:
“When making the public protection decision about the life prisoner, the Parole Board must take into account … the prisoner’s non-disclosure; and … the reasons, in the Parole Board’s view, for the prisoner’s nondisclosure.”
At Second Reading in the other place, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice said:
“This subjective approach will allow the board to differentiate between circumstances in which, for example, the non-disclosure is due to a prisoner’s mental illness.”—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/20; col. 747.]
Is the Minister fully confident that this provides adequate protection for prisoners with mental health issues and effectively balances the imperative for justice with respect for human rights? I would also be grateful if, in winding up, he could give some indication of the timetable for the tailored review of the Parole Board, and for the root-and-branch review promised in the manifesto and reiterated at Second Reading in the other place by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice.
Amidst a crisis such as the one we currently face, it would be easy to put to one side numerous other pressing problems that afflict society. This makes it doubly commendable that the Government have moved forward with the Bill, fulfilling a manifesto promise and, more importantly, demonstrating a strong commitment to victims of crime and their families. It is a reminder that, while Covid-19 and the suffering it is causing is front of mind in many of our deliberations, other sorrows and tragedies continue to play out in communities, families and the lives of individuals. The Bill will never take away their loss but, in putting the support of victims and their needs at the centre of the justice system, it may help grieving families to achieve some kind of closure and finally to lay loved ones to rest.
The Bill, as has been explained by my noble and learned friend and by the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Bull, concerns the obligations of the Parole Board when it considers whether an offender merits release from prison. It places a statutory duty on the board to consider circumstances where the offender does not disclose the sort of information I have referred to as part of its assessment of whether they should be released from custody. The board is already subject to non-statutory guidance to the same effect so the Bill, when enacted, will promote that to a statutory duty. Although I understand the welcome the Bill was given in the other place and congratulate the Members of Parliament who have campaigned on behalf of victims and their families to bring it into law, I am not sure that the approach adopted by the Bill goes far enough.
The Parole Board has always had the power to consider the release date of long-term prisoners and, although its decisions are in certain circumstances amenable to judicial review, its procedures are essentially held in private. The public and the media do not attend its hearings and its reasoned decisions are not, as a rule, published. Decisions about the liberty of the subject, especially concerning the future of offenders imprisoned for very serious violent or sex crimes, should be made in public, or at least the reasons for the Parole Board’s decisions, be it to release or not, should be available to the public. I can see that there may be certain facts or details about the victim and the case as a whole that may need to be kept confidential but, by and large, the default position should be for open justice.
I have a further concern about what is proposed by the Bill. I am not convinced that it is right to revise this aspect of the criminal justice system by guidance, even when that guidance is imposed through the medium of a statutory duty. In my judgment, if a prisoner is to be faced with a longer period in custody, it should be through a statutory arrangement, but that arrangement should not be administrative. Rather than telling the Parole Board that it must take into account that an offender has not provided certain details about their offences, it should be a discrete criminal offence, subject to appropriate defences, for a convicted defendant not to inform the police or other proper authority where or how a victim’s remains were disposed of.
The trial of the defendant for this additional offence would take place in open court before the same judge who presided over the murder, manslaughter or sex offence trial or, if the offender had pleaded guilty to the killing but none the less refused to say what had been done with the body, before the same judge sentencing for the original offence. The trial of the offence of non-disclosure could take place immediately after the finding or plea of guilty of the killing or sex crime, or later, depending on the facts of the case. There might, for example, need to be a delay while a co-defendant who had pleaded not guilty to the murder, manslaughter or sex abuse, as the case may be, was tried before dealing with the offence of non-disclosure.
The trial of the allegation of non-disclosure should not just be before the same judge who tried the murder or sex abuse case; the judge should try it without a jury. That would be quicker, of course, but would also avoid any deliberate or unwitting bias against the convicted killer or sex offender in the mind of the jury which had only just reached a guilty verdict, or of a new jury which will know of the first and highly prejudicial conviction. It would also enable the judge to be sure that the facts proved to his satisfaction in the first trial could, where relevant to the issue of non-disclosure, be available without re-proof in the non-disclosure trial. There would be a reasoned and dispassionate judgment which explained what the judge had found and why the facts applied to the relevant law led to the verdict of guilty or not guilty.
If there were a verdict of guilty, the judge could then first sentence the defendant for the original offence and, secondly, impose a consecutive sentence for the crime of non-disclosure. If sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, the defendant would be told that the minimum tariff for the murder would be, for example, 25 years and that the determinate sentence for non-disclosure was five years, to run consecutively from the end of the tariff, making a total of 30 years before release on licence could be considered. If the offence merited an extended determinate sentence, the judge would add the two sentences together, making sure that the overall number of years was neither unduly lenient nor manifestly excessive and that the two sentences would run consecutively and not concurrently.
There is no doubt a good deal of procedural and legal detail that will need to be thought through, but I suggest that the scheme I have advanced, if only in outline, better fits the purpose intended but not achieved by the Bill before us. I ask the Government to see whether what I have proposed might not better deal with the very real concerns of those who have so enthusiastically and rightly supported this Bill.
Will the noble and learned Lord also address the situation where someone is convicted of the crime of manslaughter but is given a determinate sentence of some years in prison? Does he believe that the issue would not in effect arise, in that someone who was convicted of the crime of manslaughter and had refused to disclose what happened to the body would expect to receive a life sentence from the court, as opposed to an ordinary determinate sentence or an extended determinate sentence, which are, of course, covered in the Bill? For anybody given an ordinary determinate sentence, one would assume that the victim’s remains had been recovered, due to the nature of the crime they had committed attracting that type of sentence.
Will the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, address the fact that the Bill requires the Parole Board to consider the issue but does not prevent it deciding that someone is still suitable for release? In such a case, will he confirm that the powers of the Secretary of State in these circumstances have not changed but will stay as they are at present? Will he also set out where we are in respect of people convicted of murder but who do not admit their guilt and, in some cases, protest their innocence? What happens to them? Are they, in effect, in denial and not allowed to be considered? It would be interesting to find out.
My noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley made an important point about contacting victims and their families to seek their views before somebody is considered for release. Again, I hope the noble and learned Lord can address that point. It is very important because people move away over what can be a period of many years and contact with them can be lost. The possibility of their finding out through the media, including social media, is not something we would want to see in the future.
The Bill is important in helping the families of victims come to terms with the hurt and the grief. In that sense, the Government should be congratulated on bringing the legislation forward. On the other side, there is the issue of the mental health of some prisoners, and that of human rights, which must be a concern for all of us at all times. These are of course rights that murderers deny their victims and their victims’ families, but human rights are still important. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord can address that in his remarks. I look forward to his response in due course.
My noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, who is not in his place today, and I have been looking at a number of cases involving miscarriages of justice relating to offenders that are of serious concern. We are here to pass a vital Bill because it will place further duties on the Parole Board and on the structure of how considerations of parole and possible release are brought forward. What consideration is the Ministry of Justice now giving to beefing up the need for enhanced legal aid to support those in need of better consideration of their cases? What thought is being given to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which seems to have been consistently weakened over decades so that its ability to bring forward cases of genuine need—to see that justice is done—is now much reduced? In particular, perhaps I may highlight what seems to be the number of IPP prisoners who are languishing while being held in our prison system, given that the current number is around 2,400. They are serving indeterminate sentences with no notice of release.
I am raising these issues because the Bill is about justice for victims but, at the same time, we should not make others the victims of injustice by allowing miscarriages of justice to be disregarded. I hope, as would we all, that as the Bill passes on to the statute book—as it should, so that families, in particular the McCourt family, get some sense of peace at long last because the right thing has been done—we do not allow the wrong thing to continue simply because it does not make for a good headline. I ask instead that justice is comprehensive and that the Ministry of Justice takes account of all those affected by the criminal justice system.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, mentioned wilful non-disclosure. There is a certain amount of wilful non-disclosure, but we also need to be careful of what I think of as “mind-blanking”: in other words, the psychiatric condition where people just cannot face the fact that they have done something, or their mind goes completely blank. There is a condition where you just forget everything that has happened.
I have often thought that Ian Brady, who led the police and the judicial authorities a merry dance for many years over the location of the Moors murders bodies, had probably forgotten where they were. But it was an excuse for him to get a day out from time to time, and maybe he realised that he was never going to be released. I have never been convinced that he actually knew where the bodies were. I may well be wrong, and I am certainly not suggesting that he should ever have been released, but it is possible for people to completely blank out things in their lives.
I also have a slight reservation about the child abuse provisions. Is it possible that people could name the wrong children? I think it is, particularly if the crime was some time ago. The offender is presented with a list of children who may have been in that nursery. He then thinks, “Well, if I name some, it will help me to get out, but I can’t really remember whether it was X or Y. I think it was X, so I’ll name X”—but if they are wrong, that also has a very severe impact on the child who is wrongly named. I do not have the solution, but I think the question needs looking at.
My final point is that there is a need for the Parole Board to see some psychiatric evidence and to have some independent people before it. I am certainly not advocating a legal aid bonanza of prisoners being able to hire QCs and have full hearings, but I think provision should be made for the Parole Board to call independent expert witnesses, particularly in areas such as mind blanking and the like, to advise it. We probably need also to look at the membership of the Parole Board and the degree of secrecy within which it is able to work.
Can the Minister say when it is envisaged that this law will come into force? I note that the decision is left to the department. Does he have any idea when the department will aim to bring it in?