I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. We heard very compelling testimony on precisely those points. That is not to say that some people who are serving IPP sentences have not committed very serious offences and that some of them, because of their background, do not present a very real threat to the public. It may well be that in certain cases it will be a very long time before they are capable of being released, if ever, but there are many others who fall below that threshold who are trapped unfairly in the system, and who ought to be capable of being looked at afresh, processed and released safely into the community, but we have not yet managed to do that. The Government’s amendment holds the feet of the Parole Board to the fire on that, which is good so far as it goes.
The other point I want to make is that we heard compelling evidence from Lord Blunkett, the originator of the IPP sentences, who accepted that it had not worked out as he had intended. That was powerful and very humbling testimony. There was also very powerful testimony from Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the former Lord Chief Justice, who has taken up this cause. He made the point that what we are doing so far is helpful. Improving the ability of people to access courses and gain the threshold for release is helpful and that is what the Government are, through their amendment, seeking to do. The need to review every case, rather than leaving them in limbo, is really important so we do not get drift.
However, there are two things we are not yet doing. We are not tackling the issue of needless recall. Recall is an important tool to have while we have a licence, but there is a real concern that in many cases the trigger for the recall bears no proportion to either the index offence which had caused the original sentence or the amount of time that might then be spent inside thereafter. In some cases, there was a real concern that recall was triggered for comparatively administrative breaches of the licence, rather than substantive ones linked to reoffending or increasing risk. I urge Ministers, when the Parole Board looks at each case as it will now be obliged to do under the legislation, to ensure that we do not have, frankly, risk-averse recalls. It is always a terrible balance to strike and I am very conscious of the burden on the Parole Board and probation officers in doing that, but we ought to ensure it is not done on a tick-box basis just to make sure we have protected ourselves against criticism—almost a back-covering exercise, I hate to say. There is a temptation for that in the current arrangements, but we can do better than that and I hope we will. We ought to be assessing whether the breach suggests there is an ongoing risk of reoffending or a danger to the public. That ought to be the test.
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All this is fine, but I submit to the Minister that, ultimately, we will not, as Lord Thomas suggested to us, deal with the issue and put this regrettable, misguided
and unjust episode to bed until we have grasped the nettle and made provision to resentence all our PPS offenders under the current arrangements for a proper determinate sentence. That may mean that some end up with very long determinate sentences and some may never be released. We have to be honest about that, but honesty is better than the uncertainty to which the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) referred. We should not be afraid to grasp that, because if we want credible sentencing, we have to be honest and transparent about the hard side of that, which may be bad news for some and for some families, but it may equally give an opportunity and some hope to those who can turn their lives around and be released safely. We should not rule that out as the next step, following on from what is being done.
Finally, on secure training centres, I understand what the Minister said about not seeking to single out one type of provision. Equally, however, I hope that he will know—the evidence to the Justice Committee has been clear—that we have a successful mixed economy, in effect, in the provision of custody, and I support that. We have privately and publicly run prisons in the adult establishment and privately and publicly run provision in the youth estate. There is no reason why we cannot have the same thing in relation to these provisions. I do not think anyone is asking for special highlighting of this, but local authorities have expertise—I speak as a former councillor—and I hope that the Minister will just say, “We don’t rule anything out. All those with expertise are welcome to bid and to apply.”