My Lords, in moving Amendment 208A with its proposed new clause, I give my wholehearted support to the other amendments which have been laid, to which I have appended my name, and a strong encouragement that we build on the alliance that has been put together. I thank noble Lords and, where they have them, their staff—and mine—for the terrific co-operation that has emerged over recent weeks. I give apologies from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who wished to be here but has a medical appointment. Members of this House will recall that the noble and learned Lord was Secretary of State for Justice when the IPP proposal was set aside and the 2012 abolition of that sentence agreed by the two Houses of Parliament.
At the time, I took the late and much lamented Paul Goggins to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, to discuss what might be possible as a rapid wind-up of the consequences of the original Act, part of which is my responsibility and which I want to speak about in a moment. The noble and learned Lord has reflected with me on a number of occasions, as he did on that occasion with Paul Goggins, who had been a Prisons Minister and the Minister of State in Northern Ireland responsible for the prison service there, on the massive political challenges in getting agreement. I hope that this afternoon we can take a step in finding a way forward almost 10 years later, when so many prisoners still find themselves subject to the original imprisonment for public protection.
I thank the Prison Reform Trust, the Howard League and many others for their advice. I will take a moment to thank Frances Crook for her many years of dedicated commitment and service in the cause of reform. Frances, who retired at the end of October, will long be remembered as a beacon for her commitment and dedication. But in an area which is so unfashionable and difficult to gain the public’s attention in, you also really need the utmost stalwart tenacity to carry it through. I particularly want to offer my appreciation and thanks to campaigners, individuals and families for their understanding, determination and tenacity, particularly the campaigning group UNGRIPP: Shirley Debono and Donna Mooney have been with me for almost as long as I can remember in trying to put right something which, as I mentioned a moment ago, I had a hand in getting wrong. The remarkable coalition that exists inside your Lordships’ House and outside, should surely give the Government the cover and courage to take steps now that will put wrongs right and ensure that we have a journey—a road to travel—for the future.
I want to refer briefly, because I am aware of the enormous pressure on time for the Bill, to how we got here in the first place. Back in 2003, with the Criminal Justice Act’s provisions on sentencing, we thought—this was held across both Houses at the time—that the steps we were taking would be beneficial rather than ending up with the disaster, let me call it that, which has occurred over those subsequent 18 years. The intention was, first, to put right a wrong which existed with those who were on indeterminate sentences—they were not called that, but that is what they were—who had no route out because the therapies and courses, or the journey as I like to call it, were not present.
For many years I have been trying to help a prisoner called David McCauliffe, who was sentenced for the second time in his life, that time for seven years, and is still in prison. He was sentenced at the end of the 1980s for a crime that undoubtedly created unsafe conditions for the public at the time but fell short of rape or murder. He is still in prison today after 33 years. The longer he has been in, the more difficult it has been for him to show he is safe to be released. Many IPP prisoners find themselves in that position today.
The intention was that there would be a route for those caught in that trap, like David McCauliffe, to find a way forward. At the same time, there have been a number of incidents where people who were known to be unsafe—they had declared their intention to commit further heinous crimes such as kidnap, rape and murder—were allowed out without any clarity as to how their behaviour was going to be monitored, and they were not on licence. That is why, going back to the Halliday report of 2001, the good intention was that there would be mechanisms put in place to supervise and support—I emphasise “and support”—prisoners on release, to provide safety for the public and rehabilitation for those who were safe to be in the community. Both those elements went badly wrong with the IPP sentence.
First, we had not fully agreed with the Treasury for the resources to be put in place from 2005, after I had left the Home Office, which at the time had responsibility for what is now the Ministry of Justice and sentencing. Therefore, the resources were not available, and are still not, to do the job properly for those who needed rehabilitation and preparation for release. Secondly, we had not understood that, because those therapies and courses were not available, it was quite likely that cautious members of the judiciary would take a “safety first” view in applying an indeterminate sentence rather than a determinate sentence, which in some cases would have been a matter of two or three years, in the initial phases, rather than the 10 years plus originally discussed and envisaged. This was not applied as a mandated sentence because of the understandable requirement of the judiciary to have flexibility and be able to determine a sentence without it being laid down by Parliament.
So, here we are all these years on, with two strands having gone very badly, and the lessons that needed to be learned still in front of us today. I do not think any of us could have envisaged the impact—I certainly did not—of the recall provisions which were later strengthened and therefore made more draconian. This has led to a large number of prisoners finding themselves back in prison, sometimes for committing a crime that could be very minor and sometimes for a breach of their licence conditions. Out of the 3,000 people who are still in prison on IPP, 1,300 of them are there because of recalls. That is 100% up from 2016, five years ago. If we are not careful, that trajectory will lead to more prisoners being in prison on IPP on recall than are actually in prison for the original IPP sentence applied, which is a farcical situation and a tragedy for them.
More than 60 clinical and forensic psychologists, psychiatrists and criminologists have written to me, and I hope they will write to the Minister, setting out the trajectory from those early days, where the lack of
therapies and courses led to caution and to the inability of prisoners to demonstrate that they were safe to be released; in other words, the failure to put the other mechanisms in place led to prisoners not being able to demonstrate their safety for the community. By not being able to do so, they spent so much more time in prison that the impact of that lengthy sentence and the hopelessness of not having an end date made their emotional, mental and psychological situation worse. The original sentence was supported by those who believed that the right kind of psychological conditions and help were essential to make them safe and, having undermined those conditions, we now have a situation where they are seen as unsafe; in other words, we have gone full circle, undermining the original intentions and, by doing so, having people in prison far beyond what was originally envisaged.
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The modest Amendments 208A, 208C and 208E are part of a journey to the much more robust and necessary Amendment 208F, which would be the logical conclusion of trying to get this right and doing so very quickly. Here we are, all these years on, nearly 10 years since the abolition of the Act, and we still have 1,700 prisoners who have not yet been released and 1,300 who have been released but who have, within an average of 20 months, been recalled and are still in prison. That, on a traditional fixed-term sentence, would be a sentence of three and a half or four years, often for a minor breach. This is not just unequal and unjust, it is immoral. It is immoral because those individuals, who have already had their confidence and likelihood of being able to demonstrate their safety undermined, are further undermined by the conditions they found themselves in when they came out of prison.
Amendments 208A, 208C and 208E look at the conditions inside prison for preparing people for release—which would apply more broadly, so getting this right might improve the Prison Service delivery for prisoners as a whole—and the conditions people find themselves in when they come out. It is not surprising that, since 2012, the incidence of breach and return has grown exponentially, because Christopher Grayling MP was responsible for the virtual demolition of the National Probation Service. Nobody can blame the probation service, whose resources were undermined, and the connectivity that the Centre for Social Justice quite rightly laid out all those years ago, for ensuring that people were not returned to prison, because we had not put them in the right places with the right support in the communities they were returned to.
None of this undermines my culpability in not seeing this 18 years ago, in not understanding that it would be really difficult to get the resources out of the Treasury and that it would be difficult to persuade the public—having said this was a sentence which required the presentation to the Parole Board for safety—that we were absolutely sure all these prisoners coming through and who had minor breaches were not going to commit crimes. None of us can be sure of those aspects, but it is very difficult to say that to the public.
Having a coalition of the willing and cross-party and no-party support for real change, the Government now have an opportunity to demonstrate both their
humanity and rationality in getting this right for the future. My party, and Members of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats, Cross-Benchers and the Spiritual Benches are all committed to backing the Government in doing the right thing.
I have never resiled from wanting people who have committed heinous crimes to be put away for a very long time, or from having tough sentences where they are needed. But this situation cannot go on. We have to do something for the sake of the individuals and their families, and for the safety of the community, because the longer they are in prison on a suspended animation sentence or on licence, the more likely they are to find themselves unable to rehabilitate and live a normal life. When that happens, they are more likely to commit a crime. I got it wrong. The Government now have the chance to get it right. I beg to move.