Clause 18
Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
4:30 pm
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, Justice; Harborough, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 86, in clause 18, page 13, line 30, after ‘may,’, insert
‘with the approval of the Lord Chief Justice or a judge designated by him,’.
The amendment would mean that the provision in subsection (2) would state that the Secretary of State may, with the approval of the Lord Chief Justice or a judge designated by him, in the case of any life prisoner who has been released on licence, revoke his licence and recall him to prison.
The heading of clause 18—“Recall of life prisoners: abolition of requirement for recommendation by Parole Board”—seems to stand in contradistinction to clause 17, through which the Secretary of State appears to be bending over backwards to refer matters to the Parole Board. He seems to be going the other way with clause 18 and taking away from the Parole Board any power to intervene in these matters. I am not going to detain the Committee long on this amendment because my argument broadly mirrors those that I made about the constitutional propriety of allowing the Secretary of State to do things within the sentencing system that should more properly be done by independent judges or the Parole Board.
I understand the Minister’s point about the work of the Parole Board. We all know that it has had its budget slashed so that it has had to cut back on face-to-face interviews in prisons with offenders wishing to apply for release following consideration of their cases by the board. We all know that the number of cases that it has to deal with on paper only is growing. Although, to some extent, the Government have reversed the mistake that they made in taking away the resources that allowed the Parole Board to have more face-to-face interviews, the position is still pretty parlous. However, all of those inefficiencies and mistakes do not permit the Government to take unto their own hands the power that they wish to have under clause 18.
As I said, I draw a comparison between clauses 17 and 18 because the influences seem to be going in different directions. Under clause 16, the Secretary of State wants not only to decide for himself what goes on, but to have the power to change the number of days of the automatic recall. I think that the arguments have been adequately described both now and on another occasion. I hope that the Minister can satisfy me that this clause, if it is not amended, is a good one.