Lord Woodley:

Moved by Lord Woodley

89: After Clause 19, insert the following Clause—“Re-sentencing those serving a sentence of imprisonment for public protection(1) The Lord Chancellor must make arrangements to ensure that every individual serving a sentence of imprisonment for public protection (“IPP sentence”), whether in prison or the community, has been re-sentenced within 24 months of the day on which this Act is passed.(2) The Lord Chancellor must establish a committee to provide advice regarding the discharge of the Lord Chancellor’s duty under subsection (1).(3) The committee established by virtue of subsection (2) must include a judge or retired judge—(a) under the age of 75,(b) authorised, or authorised immediately before retirement, to try cases of murder, and(c) nominated by the Lady or Lord Chief Justice.(4) Within six months of being appointed, the committee must lay a report before Parliament on the process of re-sentencing individuals serving an IPP sentence.(5) After a report has been published under subsection (4), the Lord Chancellor may disband the committee established under subsection (2) whenever the Lord Chancellor considers appropriate.(6) The Lord Chancellor must disband the committee once all those serving IPP sentences have been re-sentenced.(7) A person (“P”) serving an IPP sentence must be re-sentenced in relation to the offence or offences for which P was originally sentenced at a Crown Court designated by the Lord Chancellor for that purpose.(8) The re-sentencing court—(a) must not impose a sentence more severe than the notional determinate sentence upon the basis of which the tariff was specified as needing to be served before an application for release on licence might be made, and(b) may substitute for the IPP sentence a hospital order under section 37 of the Mental Health Act 1983, with or without a restriction order under section 41, but only if—(i) the court is satisfied, on the evidence required by that Act, that appropriate in patient treatment is available for P, and(ii) in the case of a restriction order under section 41, the statutory criteria for making such an order are met.(9) The re-sentencing court may confirm the sentence of IPP only if—(a) the re-sentencing judge determines that, at the date of the original sentencing, ignoring the alternative of an IPP sentence, P might appropriately have received a sentence of life imprisonment, and(b) at the date of re-sentencing, there is a substantial risk of P committing a further serious offence resulting in substantial harm if released. (10) Cases falling within the scope of subsection (9) may only be re-sentenced by a judge authorised, or authorised immediately before retirement, to try cases of murder.(11) The re-sentencing court may recommend that P may be subject to an extended licence for a period of up to five years, incorporating such conditions as the re-sentencing court considers appropriate to minimise the risk of re-offending.(12) In relation to the exercise of the power in subsection (7)—(a) the power is to be treated as a power to re-sentence under section 402(1) of the Sentencing Code, and(b) the Sentencing Code applies for the purposes of this section (and, accordingly, it does not matter that a person serving an IPP sentence was convicted of an offence before 1 December 2020).(13) For the purposes of this section, “IPP sentence” means—(a) a sentence of imprisonment or detention in a young offender institution for public protection under section 225 (since repealed) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003,(b) a sentence of detention for public protection under section 226 (since repealed) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, or(c) a sentence of imprisonment or detention passed as a result of sections 219 or 221 of the Armed Forces Act 2006.”Member’s explanatory statementThis new clause would implement the recommendation of the Justice Committee’s 2022 Report that there should be a re-sentencing exercise in relation to all IPP sentenced individuals, and to establish a time-limited expert committee, including a member of the judiciary, to advise on the practical implementation of such an exercise. It would also allow the court to substitute a hospital order, with or without a restriction on release for an IPP sentence in appropriate circumstances.

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 89 on IPP resentencing, and in support of all the other amendments in this group.

I am genuinely grateful for the opportunity to make the argument for resentencing to your Lordships again, although I am under no illusions that the Minister is ready to announce a U-turn from this Dispatch Box to wipe this shameful stain off our justice system once and for all—at least not yet. I have no wish either to flog a dead horse but, as I said at Second Reading, it is important for us to continue scrutinising the Government’s position on this industrial-scale miscarriage of justice.

Ministers have consistently refused to consider IPP resentencing, which the Justice Committee in the other place called for as the only solution to this terrible injustice. To put it bluntly, Ministers are still defending the indefensible. We must see this for what it is: inexcusable excuses while more people die—yes, die—and more people give up hope. This must stop; action, not warm words, will be the most important thing going forward.

In this debate, I particularly want to hear the Minister’s objections to the kind of IPP resentencing exercise described by my amendment, which has not been presented to your Lordships in this form before. Crucially, what is new is that the resentencing court can impose a secure hospital order if it thinks this is necessary for public protection, and impose any kind of extended supervision post release—again, for the same reason.

It is widely acknowledged that the IPP sentence itself has caused harm, to put it mildly. Too many unfortunate souls have suffered problems between 2005 and 2012. It is understandable that the Parole Board might have concerns about the poor mental health of some of the people whose cases they are considering, but it is simply wrong and a great injustice that this poor mental health, in many cases caused directly by this long-discredited and abolished sentence passed by this Parliament, is being used to condemn anyone to indefinite preventive detention, stuck in prison where their mental health is just going to get worse. As I said, there will be more suicides and more hopelessness.

Noble friends from across the House have previously described this as a gulag sentence, and they are, of course, correct. The Minister has previously claimed that the Parole Board is best placed to decide whether an IPP prisoner should be released, but there is no evidence of this beyond the justification originally used to create this torture sentence in the first place. It is too slow and too laborious, in spite of recent helpful changes.

Natural justice dictates that it should be the courts, not the Parole Board, that are empowered to make this decision for this cohort. That distinction lies at the heart of this injustice and is the reason why IPP sentences were abolished over a decade ago. The Minister and his officials will of course say, “What about public protection?” The secure hospital backstop I am talking about—originally a suggestion by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, as an amendment to my Private Members’ Bill—is an elegant solution to this conundrum.

Under my amendment, if the resentencing court considers someone to be too mentally ill to be released, it can transfer them to a secure hospital where they can receive the therapeutic resources necessary for recovery. On release, all former IPP prisoners would have the supervision and support considered necessary by the court—another key safeguard to protect the public that should address the concerns previously expressed to us by the Minister. That is why I am proposing, in a nutshell, an IPP resentencing exercise with a secure hospital backstop and public protection right at its heart. I sincerely look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

My Lords, the real issue in this debate is: do we persist with the so-called action plan? I pay tribute to what the Minister has been able to do with a flawed idea, but we have to decide now how we deal with this justly and remedy the injustice. It is useful to reflect that there are people who have never been released. For example, one got a nine-month tariff and has served 20 years; another got a 330-day tariff and served 17 years; one got a six-month tariff and served 16 and a half years; and another got a tariff of three years and five months and served 20 years. Those are the realities, and you judge the seriousness of what they did by those tariffs. I shall come to the misunderstanding at the heart of the MoJ about the problem it is facing.

We also have the deaths. It is important to recall that this involves people committing suicide, and we should not walk away from that. There were nine in 2023, and four in 2024. The population was down, but it might be explained by the hope that had been engendered. My concern is that, if we do not act now, we will have—I use this word deliberately—blood on our hands. We cannot shirk the responsibility for rectifying an injustice, and what an injustice this is. Perhaps we should turn in due course to the “two strikes” injustice, but that is for another day; let us concentrate on IPPs.

We need a just solution. The noble Lord, Lord Woodley, has put forward his Amendment. I do not want to add to the time we will take on this by giving my views on resentencing, but that is one option. However, the Howard League put forward another proposal, which I have put into an amendment. Very simply, it is to give the Parole Board the power to direct, and to require it to direct, the release of all these people within two years. The noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has put forward an amendment to that, suggesting giving the Government the power to apply to the Parole Board. But whether we take the resentencing exercise or this, this must be the last chance of doing anything. If we funk it now, we funk it for ever and we allow the so-called action plan to trundle along for years and years, not remedying an injustice.

Why do we have to do that? There are five points I wish to make. First, the sentence is accepted to be wrong in principle by absolutely everyone. How can we as a nation continue to punish people under a sentence that is wrong in principle and rests on the fallacy of thinking that we can predict human behaviour? There is no justification for continuing this sentence. It is simply unjust.

Secondly, and it pains me to have to say this, there is a complete misunderstanding of this sentence, partly because it was imposed so long ago, and people have moved on. When we are looking at the action plan, it is important to look at what was said in the 2024-25 IPP annual report. The sentence was described in these words:

“It was intended as a means of managing high risk prisoners, who were convicted of an offence where they would be liable to imprisonment for life, but the court did not consider the seriousness of the offence was such to justify the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment for life”.

That is a complete misunderstanding of the sentence. How can we have any confidence in a plan when people do not understand the sentence they are dealing with? I regard this as a very serious problem with this plan. I have had the privilege of being able to look at a number of cases of recall, and it is plain that those who are dealing with this do not understand the problem.

I recognise that when the error was pointed out, the department accepted the error, but it is important to see the harm that such a statement does. It puts the position of these prisoners on a false basis. They did not commit serious offences of the kind described. Many of them, as illustrated by the tariffs to which I have referred, committed offences that are not in the same league, by any imagination, as those committed by those sentenced to life imprisonment. Some of them were sentenced in respect of offences for which the sentence was no greater than five years—I note that the Government think that five years is the sentence for the kind of crime that does not deserve a jury trial. So please, will we try to understand what we are dealing with and recognise that we have done a great injustice?

Then one turns to another argument: that these people are dangerous. If we look objectively at the problems of many of them, they are not. But the test is high, and we have to accept that if we lock someone up for a very long time for an offence that is not that serious, we are likely to do them damage. That is the accepted psychiatric evidence, which those who will not accept that we must do something about this ignore, for a reason I cannot understand. But it is worse than that. Why are these people subjected to increased risk because they have been locked up under this unjust sentence? In all humility—and I do not seek to blame either political party for this—we made a mistake. In the case of the Post Office, we have done justice. In the case of blood transfusion, we have done justice. What is wrong with our system of justice, that we cannot do justice for those we have unjustly imprisoned? It is something to which we have to address our minds. I very much hope that we will have a cross-party solution. I am open to any suggestion, but the action plan is a failure. It will not deliver justice in time, and we must do something different.

There is a fourth important argument. Had any of these offenders who are locked up had the good fortune—and I say good fortune deliberately—to have been sentenced before this sentence came into effect, or to have been sentenced afterwards, they would not be subjected to this horrendous sentence from which they cannot escape. What conceivable justice is there in discriminating against a group of people and refusing to acknowledge our wrong in doing so?

Those arguments are to do with justice, and one would hope that justice is central to this Bill—we call this part of the criminal justice system. However, the Bill is meant, in a sense, to be a utilitarian Bill and one can praise it for that.

We are going to come later this evening to Amendment 122A—how many noble Lords will stay the course is another question—which deals with foreign offenders. We are intending to deport them so that we have prison places. We will not punish them; they can go free. What justice is there in a system that will seek to allow people who are foreign to escape punishment when we cannot look at the utilitarian advantage of releasing from prison some 2,500 people who have either never been released or are back on recall? The justice should be that we will deal with our own people first, free up the prison places, and if someone comes here to assassinate someone or shoplift, or deal in drugs, they should be punished, and we should use the prison places for them.

They are all powerful arguments; I have no vested interest in any solution, but I do have a vested interest in justice, and this Government are not doing justice.

My Lords, it is extremely difficult to speak after two such very powerful speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Woodley, has advanced again the resentencing option which was originally proposed by the Justice Select Committee in the other place, under the chairmanship of Sir Bob Neill when he was a Member of Parliament, on a unanimous, cross-party basis. It therefore cannot be dismissed as some reckless and trivial proposal; it should be taken with great seriousness. However, I am not going to elaborate further on it now because it has been debated already. The noble Lord has an extant Private Member’s Bill which would give it effect.

It is fair to say that the proposal from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, is new at debate in your Lordships’ House and it emanates, as he said, from a report produced by the Howard League. There are two points in what the noble and learned Lord said that I want to present in my own way. The first relates to the action plan, which has been excellent in many ways. It has achieved a great deal but, as I said at Second Reading, the difficulty with it is that there is a large number of people—nobody can put a figure on it, but consensually there is an idea that it is several hundreds, maybe nearly 1,000—who are the hard cases left after the action plan has done its work and has resolved the issues in relation to the, if you like, low-hanging fruit. We are left with several hundred people for whom it is clear the action plan is never going to be a solution. If there is no other way out for them than the action plan, then, in effect, the Government are saying that they will stay in jail until they die, because what else is there? There is no other route out.

The noble and learned Lord has presented a proposal which would help. The process would be that the prisoner would apply for parole, be refused parole, but then the Parole Board would at that point be obliged to set a date, up to two years later, on which the prisoner would be released.

The second point is that it could be represented that this is, in effect, an automatic release that follows two years after they have failed to achieve release—but that is not the wording of the Amendment. I draw noble Lords’ attention to proposed new subsection (5), inserting new Section 28(6B), which says that the Parole Board, having set the date,

“may issue such directions to facilitate the prisoner’s release at the specified future date as it considers necessary having regard to its duty to protect the public”.

This is not a reckless and automatic release that follows without any effort on anybody’s part from the decision to refuse parole. The essential idea is that the machinery of the Probation Service should be brought together and energised under the direction of the Parole Board to provide those tailored services and that tailored support, such as education and courses, and the other measures that are necessary to ensure that that person is safe to be released. That is the objective.

Let us remember that many of the people who will not be released through the action plan are in that group because they have ceased to engage with the system. Having been through the effort to achieve parole in the past and having suffered the severe psychological blow that can arise from having been refused and knocked back, many of them will simply not go through that again. But if you could offer them a date, if you could say to them, “Here is hope, in two years, if you do these things”, perhaps we can get that engagement, and perhaps those people for whom there is otherwise no exit could be engaged and brought to be released, with the approval of the Parole Board and the support they need to get them to that place. If that support turns out to be expensive and difficult to provide and requires a superhuman effort on the part of the Prison Service, the Probation Service, the Ministry of Justice and the other organs of the state, is that not the least we owe those people now? That is why I really hope that noble Lords will be able to support the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, and that the Government will be able to relent. It might need some work in detail, but I hope the whole House will be able to support the principle behind it.

Briefly, there are also amendments in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, which relate to the parallel—and in some senses, almost deeper —scandal of DPP prisoners. Noble Lords will be aware that, in essence, the only difference between DPP and IPP prisoners is that DPP prisoners were sentenced when they were under 18. Those people are still in prison. They almost certainly should not be, but they are. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, deserve support.

Finally, and I feel this is very much an anticlimax, my own Amendment 109 is almost bloodless in its technical insignificance in comparison with those put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. It is a very modest proposal and entirely administrative. I very much hope that the Minister will support it.

The amendment would allow IPP prisoners, who are in the community already serving a licence, annually to apply to the Parole Board for the discharge of that licence. In the Victims and Prisoners Act, we reduced dramatically the statutory period of the licence, and we made it easier for people to be discharged. Hundreds of prisoners have had their licence terminated as a result of that; it has been the most significant step so far in removing the scandal of IPP prisoners.

However, there are administrative difficulties, whereby if someone misses out on their discharge, they have to wait another whole two years before they can be considered again. What I am simply doing in my amendment is introducing the idea that they could apply—I would expect nobody to do this, unless they were supported by their probation officer—after one year, not two years, to have their licence discharged.

There is no threat to the public in this. We must remember that these people are already living in the community, and all the amendment seeks to do is give them permission to apply for something. The decision whether to discharge their licence finally—not to release them from jail, because they are in the community already—would still rest with the Parole Board. There is no risk to the public at all in doing this. It is a modest administrative change that will help some—not many—prisoners get rid of the stigma of this sentence sooner and resume their lives in the community as free subjects.

My Lords, my contribution this evening will be brief, only because there is a long evening ahead for the many noble Lords on the front bench and no lack of enthusiasm and commitment to continue working with other noble Lords who have spoken this evening to get this mess sorted out. I thank my noble friend Lord Woodley, who has taken up the cudgel so strongly; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, whose commitment could not be doubted after his contribution this evening; and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, who has hunted with me for a very long time now—since I first came to your Lordships’ House, it seems.

Before speaking to my Amendments 116 and 117, I note that the three contributions that have been made already illustrate the urgency of getting this matter resolved once and for all. All three Members have put their finger on one of the tragedies of the IPP sentence, which, ironically, was in part intended to deal with the two strikes that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, mentioned. The tragedy reflected in the action plan wording that the noble and learned Lord read out—what was originally intended was never in the Bill itself; it was a matter of interpretation—was one of the terrible twists of life that we now have to untangle. The main issue I have picked out concerns those people who have been in prison for so long that their mental health has inevitably deteriorated. As the noble and learned Lord said, psychiatrists have accepted that now, in a way that was not recognised in 2003—we should have done that, and they should have done that, but we did not.

On the amendments from my noble friend Lord Woodley and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I believe that, if we could build in a formula that allowed the transfer of some of those prisoners to a secure medical setting for support to be given—I am not talking about Broadmoor or Rampton; there needs to be an intermediary alternative—then it might be possible to accept the two-year imperative. That would go a long way to meeting what my noble friend is seeking to achieve in his Amendment: to move this on rapidly. The commitment to help from my noble friend on the Front Bench is unequalled, and I pay tribute to him. Listening and responding from the Front Bench is not easy—I know that, because I was there for eight years and experienced all kinds of constraints. My noble friend understands what we are talking about, so perhaps, with some creativity, we could think of a way to achieve this aim.

In my modest amendments, I am trying to relate to group seven, from Amendment 110A onwards, and what we are doing for prisoners generally with a 56-day fixed period on recall, as we are not doing it for IPP and DPP prisoners. As the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said, we should be dealing with DPP once and for all. It is a scar on me that under-18s ended up being caught up in this. Given the number involved, we can surely deal with it once and for all, for them and to have some continuity. If it is good enough for prisoners who are not on IPP or DPP to have a fixed period of recall, what is the difference for those who find themselves caught up in this spider’s web? I ask my noble friend on the Front Bench to consider that between now and Report.

I think we can build on Amendment 109, from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and go further. We could accept what he refers to, which was in the previous legislation, but, because of the very important changes that were achieved by Members of this House and the previous Justice Secretary bar one, we are in a position where we could extend that progress by reducing the licence period. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will accept an amendment on Report that would help us to achieve that goal.

By working together, we can take the next step. Here is the danger though: the more we raise the hopes of those languishing in prison or who have been returned for long periods of time because of a breach of licence, not because of committing another crime, the more we are in danger of inadvertently accelerating the tragedy of people taking their own lives, as described by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. We tread a very narrow path here, fighting like mad to ensure that we can bring about real change without raising hopes that are then dashed. This is a line of progress that I hope that my noble friend the Minister will help us deal with.

My Lords, I could not possibly improve on the speeches that we have heard so far, but my reason for speaking is that I think I am the only Peer here with previous judicial experience to have actually conducted a statutory resentencing exercise. Perhaps I could explain how that came about and what it meant for me.

When I became the Lord Justice General of Scotland —that is, the Chief Justice—in 1989, it was not the practice of judges to state a tariff when imposing a life sentence, whether discretionary or mandatory; that was simply open-ended. It was my job, as Chief Justice, to advise the Secretary of State when the time had come for the prisoner to be referred to the Parole Board for consideration for release. It was done in a system whereby civil servants sent the papers to me and I then had to conduct a paper exercise and, in effect, tell the Secretary of State how much longer the prisoner would have to serve before it was time for him to be released.

It was a different world, and the prisons were not crowded. Usually, they came to me when the prisoner had served about 11 years. My advice was to extend it by three or four years, so that they were being referred to the Parole Board quite early compared to what happens today. It was a paper exercise and I found it extremely difficult. There were about 50 life prisoners I had to consider. I was provided with enormous files, which described their conduct in prison, as well as the original offence itself. In order to equip me to understand them, I visited all the prisons in Scotland except one, which was too far away. I also spent several sessions attending the Parole Board to understand how it worked. I had to equip myself fairly well to understand the job I was doing.

About three years into my office, the law was changed. In the interest of transparency, it was decided that the Chief Justice in England and Wales and me in Scotland should establish a tariff. That brought to an end the system I was using, because, from then on, judges were going to produce a tariff when they passed their first sentence. That was a system that I worked with for a while and had to give up.

It is with that background that I am extremely interested in the very well-crafted Amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, has advanced, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I have looked at it rather carefully and it seems that it requires the resentencing judge to look at four issues. First, what should the notional determinate sentence have been for the offence or offences which were committed, thereby identifying the tariff which would be applied for the purposes of reference to the parole board? Secondly, there is the additional point of whether a hospital order should be substituted, which is a very important safeguard in working through the system that he is describing. Thirdly, if the prisoner might appropriately have received a life sentence, is there a risk of committing a further serious offence resulting in serious harm if the prisoner were released; and, fourthly, if that is the case, should the IPP sentence simply be confirmed?

As I say, it is very carefully crafted and it has public safety in mind, as well as the interests of the prisoner. However, I think we have to be quite careful as to what this would mean for the resentencing judge. He or she would need to be equipped with a great deal of information, not only about the original offence but about what has happened to the prisoner since then, considering whether a hospital order is required or, if it is a life sentence, whether the safety of the public requires that the IPP sentence be confirmed. The Minister might also like to bear in mind the workload of the judges when considering what to make of this proposal. I suspect that the volume of material would be very considerable, and therefore judicial time needs to be found for that evidence to be assimilated and understood, and then a decision taken.

What is not clear at the moment—I think this is for the committee that the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, has suggested we set up—is how the exercise would be conducted. I assume that it is going to be a paper exercise rather than a hearing in court, but that is to be determined. I assume that it would require a written decision to be given—that was not required of me at that time, but I suspect that nowadays a written decision would need to be given—and of course there is always the risk of appeal or judicial review. So the decision-taking exercise has to be very carefully conducted.

In my case, in dealing with the cases I had to deal with, I had to give up two weeks of judicial time to conduct the exercise which I had to carry out. One has to assume that at least one day of judicial time per case would be needed here, because, otherwise, the decisions would be open to being set aside because they have not been properly considered. The whole point of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, is that the safety of the public is being protected by the care which would be taken in this exercise. So one has to bear in mind not only the nature of the exercise but the time that the judiciary would have to commit to it.

I am not suggesting that this is not a very good way of finding an answer to the problem we are faced with. However, if the Minister is not inclined to adopt it, I would very much adopt the proposal from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and, if that does not succeed, there is of course the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, which I would also support.

I hope that what I have said has been of interest, to give some background to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, which has my support. I suggest that it has to be seen in its full context and what it really means for the judges who have to conduct the exercise.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the expert contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed Amendment 89 and I would say that that judicial time, if it is necessary, needs to be allocated. Society and the Government have a responsibility to people whom we have put in this impossible situation to find a way out and that amendment implements the Justice Committee’s recommendations.

It is a great pleasure to follow all the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate thus far, many of whom are veterans, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, in trying to sort out this mess. I did not speak on this group at Second Reading and I apologise for that. However, as I said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed Amendment 89. She very much regrets that she has to be somewhere else at the moment and so your Lordships’ House gets me instead. I did speak on the issue of IPP prisoners at Second Reading of the Victims and Prisoners Bill in 2023. I said then that it was an extremely knotty and long-running problem. That is what we have heard and what has been reflected here.

However, we can see from that debate in 2023 and today the power and force of the contributions. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, someone perhaps not usually given to such language, spoke about “blood on our hands”. The noble Lord, Lord Woodley, spoke about “creating gulags”. We abolished this sentence in 2021 because it was wrong, yet the people subjected to it are living with its consequences every day and we have a responsibility to sort this out. There is also the practical point that, if the Government want to reduce the prison population, here is a group who should be at the forefront of looking at how to do that. Instead, far too many of them are in prisons that are wholly unsuited to their progression—30%, according to the latest figures. We cannot claim to be serious about reducing the prison population while leaving this situation to fester. There are other amendments in this group that take us some way forward, but Amendment 89 is the best one. This is the bare minimum of justice for a relatively small group of people who were handed a sentence that Parliament has already acknowledged was a mistake.

I will make one final reflection. What is behind this tragedy is a reflex that we have seen from far too many politicians over far too many years. Under pressure, the reaction is, “Lock ‘em up” or “Lock ‘em up for longer”. That is a reflex that we cannot allow to run loose in future.

My Lords, I will say a brief word and apologise that I have another commitment in 15 minutes, so may not hear the Minister.

I back up what all speakers have said this afternoon—in particular the passionate and convincing words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. We all believe that the Minister’s heart is in the right place and we need to encourage him to go back to anyone who is putting constraints on what he can do and ask them to read the speeches from this afternoon. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, the state has recognised other cases—the Post Office Horizon scandal, infected blood, to some extent Hillsborough, and others—where it has created a major injustice and has tried to make up for those miscarriages. This is not a technical issue, it is an ethical issue, and we are all begging the Minister to deliver the justice that has been called for from all sides of the House this afternoon.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, put his finger on something very important when he said to us that we must be careful about giving hope and then dashing it. But without hope, what is there? That is the point the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, made and it is why I say that I have rarely sat in this Chamber and listened to such powerful speeches.

I was very happy to hear once again that the Minister welcomes this, because he is so involved with rehabilitation. The problem for a lot of these people is that there is no rehabilitation, and that is why we really have to act now.

I am not going to recap everything I said at Second Reading, but I will pick up one point. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, who spared some time to talk to me about joint enterprise, which in some ways is connected to this. I have had a further discussion with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who has more ideas that I hope the Minister might be prepared to hear.

Given what I have heard here, I have, as I said, rarely been so moved by something. I used to work on the Koestler Trust, as I have told noble Lords, and we used to take the arts into prisons to try to give people some hope. I shall never forget managing to get a guitar to a man, who wrote to me afterwards and said, “Thank you so much for this. If I’d had this means of expressing myself when I was 18, I would not now be serving life for murder.”

This ability to look forward, to hope and to communicate with other human beings is so important. So, like other people who have spoken, I beseech the Minister to try to come to some happy ending to this very sorry affair.

My Lords, in this country we really have our hearts broken when, in places in the world where there are dictatorships, people are incarcerated year in, year out with their cases not even heard. We find that quite appalling.

When I was sent to administer justice in the northern part of Uganda, where a lot of people had been locked up because President Amin did not want them around, I arrived there and they said, “No, you can’t hear those cases because the president has told us we shouldn’t do this”. I had been trained in the English way of looking at justice. I could not but hear those cases. My first job was to hear those very hard cases, and I found out that there was no evidence as to why they should be in prison.

I remember that I took nine of them into my chambers and told them, “I’m going to keep you locked up, but I’ll tell you on which day you’re going, and I’ll announce in court, when you have already left the country, that you have been discharged from this particular thing on these grounds”. That went on for four months. Then I had my time, when there were no soldiers in the court observing what I was doing. I knew that if I had released them before then, they would have been killed. Part of my falling out with Amin was to do with some of those cases.

It is not easy to deliver justice. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was clear that some of these prisoners—I have met quite a few in Birmingham and in the province of York when I have visited prisons—and their stories leave you saying, “Is this the mother of democracy? Is this the mother of the way courts work? Is this how we treat people?” Those who committed crimes when they were young, particularly, have looked at possibilities, and then what has happened? Hope has been dashed.

I plead with the Minister that, instead of asking noble Lords to withdraw their amendments—that may be the language used, in order that this does not necessarily become a strategy—there be a dialogue with people with good ideas, which the Minister is very good at, so that we solve this once and for all.

This has left me sometimes very angry, so I can understand why the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said that if we do not do anything about it, we already have blood on our hands. A just society is shown by how it deals with the vulnerable, the weak, the helpless. They have been put there for years at Her Majesty’s pleasure, and now at the King’s pleasure. Something has to be done. My view is that the Minister should gather together a group of people with good ideas and have a real conversation, rather than going through the motions of “I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his Amendment”, because that is postponing justice, and that is not on.

My Lords, the speeches in this debate have been comprehensive and committed, so I have little to add to them. All noble Lords who have spoken have done so passionately and persuasively about ending this scandal. I use the word “scandal”—it has been rightly called a disgrace, a stain on our system, and many other things. The passion for justice of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, shone through every sentence of his speech and has to oblige the Government to end this appalling injustice. We have been guilty, in a country dedicated, nominally at least, to ideals of justice, of the grossest of injustices in this case. It must end, and it must end now.

We have a chance to end it now, completely and for ever. We thought we had abolished IPPs in the LASPO Act when we stopped any new IPP sentences being passed. My noble friend Lord McNally, then Minister of State, and the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, Secretary of State at the time, believed that the power to reverse the burden of proof in that Act would be exercised, so that we would never have this long tail of IPP prisoners who have now served way beyond their tariffs.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, explained how unjust it was that IPP prisoners were treated unlike any other offenders. For those prisoners, we have abandoned any principle that the punishment should fit the crime, in favour of a system of preventive detention with a heavy burden placed throughout on prisoners to prove their fitness for release after their proper punishment—often very short punishment—has been completed. The principle of punishment fitting the crime has been ignored, as has been illuminated by nearly all the speeches today. That illumination has extended to the complete ineffectiveness of the action plan in the case of many IPP prisoners, however well-intentioned it was at the time. Those prisoners could end up, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, pointed out, imprisoned for the rest of their lives if they fail to qualify for release under the action plan.

The sensible way to end this now is to accept one or more of the amendments before the Committee in order to ensure the early release of all remaining IPP prisoners and to end their risk of recall within a reasonable time span. I do not mind which Amendment is adopted. I note that after his detailed and learned analysis, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, was broadly content to endorse any of the solutions proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Woodley and Lord Moylan, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Fox, or the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and myself. I too am content with any of those solutions. The important thing is to persuade the Government now to accept one of them and finally to put an end to this injustice.

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in what is a profoundly serious and necessary debate, and to those who have tabled the amendments before us: the noble Lords, Lord Woodley and Lord Blunkett, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and my noble friend Lord Moylan. These amendments reflect a shared recognition across parties and across the Committee that the legacy of the IPP regime remains one of the most challenging unresolved issues within our criminal justice system and, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, observed, a “stain” on our justice system.

Under our system of criminal justice, we do not detain and imprison people because we perceive that they are probably or even certainly going to commit a crime at some indeterminate and uncertain point in the future. But that is essentially the basis upon which we detain IPP prisoners in custody after they have served the prison term of their original offence. It is, of course, worrying that many IPP prisoners may present a serious risk to the public if released. However, under the logic that flows through much of this very Bill, the Government must be prepared to advocate for society to accommodate such a risk by community supervision rather than endless detention.

As the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, observed, the Justice Committee’s 2022 report described the IPP system as “irredeemably flawed”, and he seeks to give effect to its recommendation. Whether or not Members support that specific mechanism, it is beyond dispute that thousands of IPP prisoners remain trapped in a system never intended to endure, with outcomes that the state itself acknowledges are simply wrong.

My noble friend Lord Moylan’s Amendment raises another vital point: the ability for prisoners on extended licence to seek annual review after the qualifying period. Whatever one’s view of automatic termination on mandatory timelines, there is clear force in the principle that people must not be left without a meaningful hope or a clear route to progress.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, spoke to his Amendments 116 and 117 on recall and automatic release. Again, many noble Lords will be uneasy that individuals can be recalled indefinitely for minor, technical breaches, long after tariff expiry. This, again, points to the need for clarity, confidence and, indeed, proportionality in the present system. It cannot be simply risk aversion that dictates outcomes.

The amendments in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, supported by others, propose a future release mechanism whereby the Parole Board can set a specified release date, subject to compliance with directions. This recognises the reality described by countless practitioners that progression can become possible only if there is a clear destination and a structure to reach it. Amendment 130 then introduces a safeguard enabling the Secretary of State, if necessary, to seek variation to protect the public.

No one in this debate has suggested that risk can be ignored. Equally, nobody advocates arbitrary release of dangerous offenders. But every proposal brought to the Committee today has an element of public protection embedded in it. Where Members may differ is only on the most responsible and principled route to resolve a system that all agree has patently failed. The point is to choose not the easiest path but the right one. The public are entitled to a system that protects them, but then IPP prisoners and their families are entitled to justice and to fairness. The rule of law should produce finality—indeed, it must produce finality.

I thank noble Lords again for the seriousness with which they have approached this debate. I look forward to continued constructive engagement as the Bill proceeds—and to the necessary outcome that justice demands, not just for IPP prisoners but for our collective conscience.

I will now address these amendments, which were spoken to very powerfully, on the imprisonment for public protection, or IPP, sentence. As noble Lords know, this is an issue that I also feel very passionately about. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Woodley for his tireless efforts on this issue and for his amendments, which seek to resentence all IPP sentence individuals. I am also grateful for the reflections from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, on the requirements of a resentencing exercise and thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Ludford, for their thoughtful words on this important issue.

I hope it is clear that the reason for not resentencing IPP offenders is to protect the public and safeguard victims. Although we are determined to support those in prison to progress towards safe and sustainable releases, we cannot take any steps that would put victims or the public at risk. Resentencing would result in offenders still in custody being released even when the independent Parole Board has determined—in many cases repeatedly —that they are too dangerous to be released, having not met the statutory release test. My noble friend’s amendments would allow the court to confirm an IPP sentence for those who might have received a life sentence, but this would not prevent the resentencing and release of those who do not fall within the proposed parameters but who the Parole Board have previously assessed as not safe to be released.

The amendments also provide for the substitution of an IPP sentence with a hospital order. However, at the imposition of an IPP sentence, the courts already had the power to issue a hospital order under the Mental Health Act if there was evidence of a mental disorder at the time of the offence being committed. Additionally, if a prisoner now has a severe mental health need to an extent that detention under the Mental Health Act may be appropriate, they will be referred and assessed clinically to determine whether a transfer to a mental health hospital is warranted. This has always been available to those serving the sentence.

Amendment 129, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, would provide IPP prisoners with a release date within two years. Again, in this circumstance, individuals would be released who have not been considered safe for release by the Parole Board. The addition to this amendment from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would provide a limited safeguard. This would allow the Secretary of State to make an application to the Parole Board for the release date to be varied or set aside. However, when considering an application to set aside, the Parole Board would be required to release the prisoner or fix a new release date at the following hearing. The Parole Board already reviews IPP cases at least every two years and, in many cases, more regularly.

We have to remain focused on the best and safest way to support IPP offenders as fast as possible to a safe release. It is important to remember that IPP offenders received their sentence after being convicted of a violent or sexual offence. Therefore, for any decision that removes the protection of the statutory release test, we must be comfortable with the prospect of these offenders living in our communities; that is what we would be demanding of the public.

We know that individuals received the IPP sentence because they committed a sexual or violent offence. Extended sentences were available alongside the IPP sentence, but the sentencing judge decided that an IPP sentence was appropriate for the offender at the time. Under that sentence, a person is released only following assessment by the Parole Board. There would be considerable risk to the public and victims if we released those serving the IPP sentence who are currently in our high-security establishments.

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt, but does the noble Lord accept that, in many cases, especially in the early part of the IPP regime, judicial discretion was almost nil? It was not that the judge determined that an IPP sentence was appropriate; rather, the guidelines given to him said that in certain circumstances, where the offence for which the person had been found guilty and an earlier offence for which they had been convicted appeared on a certain table in a certain configuration, they had no choice but to give an IPP sentence. That is how the sentence was imposed in many cases. There were circumstances where two people were prosecuted for the same crime, which they had carried out together. One of them had a history which brought this table into operation, the other did not. One would get an IPP sentence, the other a determinate sentence appropriate to that crime, although they had both been involved. That point, which is of capital importance, has never been fully recognised by the Ministry of Justice. Judicial discretion was not exercised or exercisable in the case of many of these sentences.

Before my noble friend on the front bench replies, could he also reflect that this took place on a Court of Appeal ruling two years after the implementation of the Act in 2005? That judgment then determined the hearings and therefore the sentences granted by judges, consequent on that Appeal Court ruling.

I thank noble Lords for their helpful comments, which explain why this is such a difficult and important area. We need to keep the public safe, but we also need to keep working as noble Lords to try to do what we can to address this situation.

I welcome the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, on the importance of supporting IPP offenders.

Might I say to the Minister that I set the history of all of this out in a judgment? If only his officials would read it and understand, we would not be in the mess that he has been placed in.

I will take the noble and learned Lord’s comments away and read that again, but that is also why our quarterly Peers’ meetings on IPP are so important in discussing all these topics.

We must do all that we can to support all IPP prisoners to reduce their risk and progress towards a release decision, but I would not be doing my job to protect the public if they were to be released without the independent Parole Board deciding it is safe to do so. My hope is that every IPP prisoner gets the opportunity to be released and have a successful life in the community, but we need to do that in a way that sets those prisoners up for success in the community. The Government’s view is that any change that removes the protection of the statutory release test is not the right way to do this.

I am aware of criticism of some parts of the IPP action plan, including those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, but it remains my view that the steps we are taking through it are the best way to support this progression. It has contributed to a 10% reduction in the IPP prison population in the 12 months to 30 September 2025. The number of people who have never been released fell by around 14% in the same period. Since the publication of the first action plan in April 2022, the unreleased IPP population has fallen by 39% and is now below 1,000. The focus that I and colleagues have on the IPP action plan means that I need to do more and more work on it, to see where we can add improvements all the way.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Blunkett for his amendments, which seek to allow the Secretary of State to make provision for the automatic re-release of those serving an IPP or DPP sentence who are recalled to prison. My noble friend will be aware of the deep respect I have for his ongoing commitment, drive and tenacity to do all he can to support those serving the IPP sentence. I greatly value his contribution to today’s debate, as well as the thoughtful insights and individual cases he raises with me outside the House.

I appreciate that noble Lords have questioned why we are introducing fixed-term recalls for offenders serving standard determinate sentences but do not accept this change for IPP offenders. There are two crucial differences: the threshold for recall and the level of risk that the offender poses. IPP offenders can be recalled only for behaviour or breaches of their licence that are causally linked to their offending. That is a high bar, and one higher than for recalling prisoners serving standard determinate sentences. I must remind noble Lords what that means in practice: that the Probation Service no longer believes that controls available in the community are sufficient to manage that offender’s risk to keep the public safe, and that the public are therefore at risk of further sexual or violent offending.

A fixed-term recall for IPP offenders would not provide sufficient time for an individual to demonstrate that their risk had reduced, or to receive the required support to reduce their risk, before being automatically re-released. This would put victims and the public at risk. While we will return to the question of recall in more detail later in this debate, I must remind noble Lords that we have built significant safeguards into our fixed-term recall changes. These mean that many offenders who pose a similar risk to IPP offenders recalled to prison are also not eligible for a fixed-term recall.

The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 introduced a power for the Secretary of State to release recalled IPP prisoners where it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that they should remain in prison. This is referred to operationally as release after a risk assessed recall review, or RARR. Recalled IPP offenders have already been re-released using this power, when they were due to wait for a number of months before their scheduled oral hearing before the Parole Board.

The revised IPP action plan, published on 17 July this year, now includes a commitment to enable swift re-release following a recall through RARR, where it is safe to do so. This means that HMPPS is considering all IPP offenders recalled for being out of touch, or in relation to allegations of further offences, for RARR, and is trialling an extended referral period to allow more time to consider cases for potential use of RARR before referral to the Parole Board. I respectfully suggest that this power means we already have the ability to do what the noble Lord’s Amendment seeks to achieve: a quicker re-release of recalled individuals where it is safe to do so.

I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his amendment, for my noble friend Lord Blunkett’s reflections on it and for their ongoing interest in this important issue. The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to allow a prisoner whose licence is not terminated by the Parole Board at the end of the relevant qualifying period to make an annual application to the Parole Board for consideration of licence termination. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 made significant changes to the IPP licence period by reducing the qualifying period for referral to the Parole Board and introducing a provision for automatic licence termination. This automatic provision provides greater certainty to offenders than the annual referrals about when their licence will terminate, which is also important for victims. These changes have resulted in the number of people serving a sentence in the community falling by 65%.

Furthermore, at the four-year point after initial release, if supervision is not suspended or the licence is terminated by the Parole Board at the end of the three-year qualifying period, probation practitioners can further consider applying for suspension of supervision at their own discretion. We must also consider the potential effect on victims of going through an additional Parole Board review just a year after the previous one, but I acknowledge that the noble Lord’s amendment would preserve the role of the Parole Board in this process. I am happy to have further conversations with him and other noble Lords on this point in the coming weeks.

I thank noble Lords for their work on this important issue, and I hope that they are assured not only of the work that we are currently undertaking but of our absolute resolve to make further progress for those serving the IPP sentence. I will continue to work closely with noble Lords and look forward to seeing them at the upcoming round table, and to discussing the points raised between now and Report. I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.

Does the Minister agree that the concept of us imprisoning individuals on the grounds of a perception that they may commit a crime at some indeterminate point in the future is utterly anathema to our whole system of criminal justice?

Our expert probation staff who manage the risks in the community are experts in determining the risk that offenders pose, including IPP offenders. It is therefore their professional judgment and their decision whether they recall someone or not.

My Lords, I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for my stumble at the beginning. My inexperience in the process here got in the way. Having listened to all the contributions, some of them were very emotional and some heart-rending, but I am quite certain that did not change the tremendous contribution that each and every noble Lord has made in here this afternoon.

I was heartfelt as I sat here, as I know that we have dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of IPP family members—maybe even some prisoners—watching this today, hoping for maybe more than the Minister has just said. I will come back to that in a moment. Nevertheless, listening to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Blunkett—indeed all the other Lords who contributed—I think that the experience was absolutely unbelievable.

It is a shame that, while the Minister has listened to them, he has come up with exactly the same answer that I predicted at the very beginning, which is more and more reasons why we cannot do the right thing. There is no doubt at all about that in my mind: there were more excuses for allowing people to suffer in prison and more reasons why we will, unfortunately, see more people take their lives, with no hope, because they are still in prison and serving sentences there.

The Minister said that his efforts were to make sure that we protect the public, and I wholeheartedly support that. That is why my Amendment for resentencing clearly identifies public safeguards as being at the very forefront of all we want to do.

However, it is not too late. I intend to continue to work with all colleagues and comrades in this Chamber to try to convince the Minister to talk with David Lammy and others and do the right thing on behalf of this group. On behalf of those families, prisoners and all the contributors here this afternoon, I implore the Minister to go away and rethink, re-evaluate and reassess, and, I hope, to come back, as this goes along, with a completely different response to that he has given us again today.

Amendment 89 withdrawn.

With the leave of your Lordships, I would like to clarify my comments on Amendment 88, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster. We have already publicly committed to legislation to make this a statutory requirement, and that commitment stands. We are, however, concerned that setting the precise timing for the report’s publication, and its content, in primary legislation may create unnecessary rigidity, but I hope the noble Lord is reassured that we share the intent behind the amendment.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for what he has just said. Can he assure your Lordships’ Committee that if he is not prepared to accept my Amendment 88, he will bring forward his own amendment at some later stage in our deliberations to bring into effect the commitment that he has just repeated from the front bench?

We may not bring forward an Amendment, but we will legislate to make sure this happens.