Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd:

Moved by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd

76: After Clause 23, insert the following new Clause—“Provision for the Parole Board to direct release on licence of an IPP prisoner at a specified future date(1) Section 28 (duty to release certain life prisoners) of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 is amended as follows.(2) In subsection (5)(b), at the end insert “or, in the case of a prisoner in respect of whom the Parole Board has made an order under subsection (6B), the prisoner has served the period ending on the future specified date,”.(3) In subsection (6)(b), at the end insert “or the Parole Board has made an order under subsection (6B)”.(4) In subsection (6A), at the end insert “but do not apply to a prisoner in respect of whom the Parole Board has made an order under subsection (6B)”.(5) After subsection (6A) insert—“(6B) In the case of a prisoner serving one or more preventive sentences as defined by section 31A(5), and not serving any other life sentence, where the Board does not direct his or her immediate release under subsection (5), the Board must fix a date for the person’s release on licence (“a specified future date”) and may issue such directions to facilitate the prisoner’s release on licence at the specified future date as it considers necessary having regard to its duty to protect the public.(6C) Any date fixed under subsection (6B) must not be later than—(a) the second anniversary of the date on which the decision is taken in the case of a prisoner serving a sentence of imprisonment or detention in a young offender institution for public protection under section 225 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 219 of the Armed Forces Act 2006);(b) the first anniversary of the date on which the decision is taken in the case of a prisoner serving a sentence of detention for public protection under section 226 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 221 of the Armed Forces Act 2006).(6D) A prisoner in respect of whom a direction has been made under subsection (6B) may apply for the specified future date to be varied once six months have passed from the determination of the release date.(6E) At any time before the expiration of an order for release on licence or direction made under subsection (6B) or an order for release on licence or direction made under this subsection, the Parole Board shall on the application of the Secretary of State, or as the Parole Board may otherwise determine, reconsider any order for release on licence at a specified future date or direction then in force and may direct that the order for release on licence or direction made be set aside and in its place extend the specified future date or order a new specified future date or make any further directions as to the licence conditions it considers necessary.”.”Member’s explanatory statementThis Amendment requires the Parole Board to release on licence at a fixed future release date post tariff IPPs (who has not been released on licence immediately), after the successful completion of directions designed to ensure the public will be adequately protected upon release, with residual powers for the Secretary of State to apply to the Parole Board to vary its Orders.

My Lords, the last Government and this Government have done a great deal to help those who were sentenced to imprisonment for public protection and released on licence. I welcome the amendments tabled by the Government and other noble Lords in relation to the position of those on licence. But we have done nothing to deal with the problem of those who have never been released. In moving the Amendment, I seek to provide a measure of real justice in the Bill for what is otherwise largely a Bill to deal with the prison crisis and to ensure that the prisons can run in an orderly manner. The amendment deals simply with justice.

I need not tell your Lordships the current position; it is well known. There are more than 940 prisoners who have never been released and some 200 more in secure mental accommodation, again who have never been released, even though this sentence was abolished in 2012.

Nor is there any need for me to set out the human stories of what these people who have never been released have been subjected to: short tariffs, yet many, many years beyond their tariffs. No one has really tried to address this. Suggestions have been put forward, including resentencing, but each Government have said no, so the Howard League decided it would set up a small group of experts to try to come up with a solution and bring justice at long last.

The key element of that solution, which is embodied in Amendment 76, is that the Parole Board ought to be asked to modify its position and to determine what steps would be necessary to ensure the release of those who have never been released within a two-year window. At the time this amendment was put forward in Committee, it did not contain what I would call a fail-safe Clause, but, with the very great help of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, it now contains a clause that modifies the original proposal and enables the Government—or HMPPS—to go back to the Parole Board and say that this two-year window cannot be met. So there is therefore a complete fail-safe.

The real question is: having left the decision in the hands of the Parole Board, and having tried to ensure that we give these prisoners hope and that we provide for the safety of the public, why will the Government not accept this? It is difficult to find an answer, because accepting it would bring justice as far as the public are concerned, and certainly as far as victims are concerned: many of these crimes were committed at least, by their very nature, more than 13 years ago. Above all, it would ensure justice for the offenders.

I summarised in Committee the reasons why we needed to do something. There was no conceivable justification for keeping people in prison under a sentence that is universally and without exception regarded as a mistake. Most people are flabbergasted when you say we are still imprisoning people 13 years after we concluded that the sentence under which they were imprisoned was wrong in principle. There can be no justification. More seriously, if you had the position where you committed an offence before 2005 or committed an offence after 2012 of exactly the same kind as one committed by those who are subject to the IPP, you would be automatically released at the end of that determinate sentence. There is no conceivable justification for discriminating against those who happened to be sentenced during a period of mistaken penal policy.

Worse still, the effect of the sentence, particularly on those who have never been released, is that it has severely damaged them mentally. To the extent that they may pose, or be thought to pose, a risk of danger, that is something that the state has helped create. Normally when the state makes a mistake, the state is sorry and tries to do something for the victims of its mistakes. Why not here?

Then, as is clear from the other provisions of the Bill, and as the Minister made very clear when dealing with an amendment just before the break, the prison capacity is in such crisis that we have to send, for example, foreign national offenders back to their own country, and we have to release serious offenders under what is described as the earned progression model. Why, therefore, can we not, in the middle of this calamity, see whether we could achieve some balance in prison capacity by addressing this problem?

How can we continue with an action plan that has been running for years but is not achieving justice in time? It is difficult to understand how that can be the case. Possibly it is because, as I explained in Committee, the officials in the department simply do not understand that IPP is not dealing with offenders who committed very serious offences that needed life imprisonment. This was a mistaken sentence: a flawed view that you could cure someone of not being good. When you think of what the ambition was, it is no wonder that it was bound to fail. But they do not seem to understand that. They also do not understand the concept of justice: that if you make a mistake and damage people, you owe a duty to remedy that.

The Government then said, “Well, there’s a risk”. But what is proposed reduces the risk to the minimum. It leaves the decision in the hands of the Parole Board, but it also sets a date and a mechanism by which the public can see what is to be done, with a fail-safe if things do not work out right.

Finally, how can there really be any objection in principle? When the Act abolishing IPPs was passed, a statutory power was added to enable the release test to be changed. It was a far-sighted decision of the then Lord Chancellor, the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, but no one has sought to use that, and we are stuck with where we are.

It is interesting to go back 11 years to 2014, when the mistake had been made but the Lord Chancellor was not prepared to deal with the position of those who had been punished prior to the sentence being abolished, to see what was said. If you read the debates in 2014, you can see what Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Lloyd thought, and what Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood said. In October 2014, he said:

“I think I can fairly say that I have never come across an injustice as plain and persistent as this on an institutionalised basis, because that is what this is, and it grows worse with every passing year”.—[Official Report, 20/10/14; col. 456.]

That was said 11 years ago and nothing has been done to try to address the problem: and one can see that, 11 years later, the problem has grown worse.

I need not read out the statistics that have been published by UNGRIPP on the suicide and self-harm rates. We cannot ignore that, but that is the harm that we are doing by not acting, and why Lord Brown was so right when he coined the phrase that this was a stain on British justice. Surely, we cannot delay any longer changing the arrangements for release. The amendment put forward seeks to do that in a way that is as safe as can be devised, while bringing to an end this misconceived sentence and at last doing justice. I very much hope that the Government will realise that action cannot any longer be avoided.

This amendment seeks to put forward a just and safe solution. I very much hope at this 11th hour that the Government will think again; otherwise, I will seek to test the opinion of the House, because we cannot go on not doing justice and depriving those whom we unjustly sentenced to this terrible form of punishment, without making proper amends. I beg to move.

My Lords, I express my support for the new Clause which has been so ably advocated for by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and to which I and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, have added our names. The purpose behind the new clause achieved very considerable support at Second Reading and in Committee. I will focus primarily on the provisions of proposed new subsection (6E), which I hope meet the primary concerns that have been expressed by the Minister.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, rightly said, it is now widely recognised that the IPP regime is a very serious stain on this country’s reputation for justice. We need to address that. It has been addressed prospectively by legislation but not retrospectively. This new clause gives your Lordships’ House—and thus Parliament—the opportunity to do it in a statutory form. Hitherto, this Government, like the previous Government, have relied on administrative measures. That is not sufficient.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has set out the essential facts. They can also be read and studied in the report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Justice that was published in 2022 and more recently in the report published in June 2025 by the Howard League for Penal Reform. My noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, were very distinguished contributors to that report. I will not repeat what has already been said and published. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I will concentrate on the solution.

The proposed new clause reflects the principal recommendation of the Howard League; namely, a two-year conditional release scheme for IPP prisoners. The league’s recommendation, which is incorporated in the new clause, is that in IPP cases the Parole Board should be required to set a date within a two-year window when a prisoner should be released, together—this is important—with what has been done by way of conditions to ensure public safety. The Government’s reaction is not one that I am blind to. It has been to oppose the recommendation on the grounds that it runs the risk of releasing individuals who, in the opinion of the Parole Board, may pose a continuing risk to the public. That is indeed a risk which needs to be addressed. I suggest that it is properly and fully addressed by proposed new subsection (6E).

It is never possible wholly to exclude risk. I have some personal experience of this. Nearly 40 years ago, I was a junior Minister in the Home Office. The then Home Secretary was Lord Hurd of Westwell. I served him for seven years in the Home Office and the Foreign Office. He is one of the most distinguished public servants of the post-war era. Subject to his overarching responsibility, I was responsible for determining the release of inmates from special hospitals. I was also responsible for fixing the tariffs in homicide cases. That, happily, is no longer a task for Ministers. In both instances a risk of repetition of the offence could not be excluded, but unless you wish to incarcerate an individual for life, which in general I regard as unconscionable, you have to take a measure of risk. The task before any Government, any Minister, is to address and mitigate the risk. That is what proposed new subsection (6E) seeks to do.

The subsection is designed to meet the concerns that have been expressed by Ministers, most recently and in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. It would enable the Parole Board, at any time during the currency of a previously made order, to revisit that order, and if the Parole Board deemed it necessary, rescind or vary the provisions of the order or extend its term.

Moreover, and this is perhaps the most important point, the subsection would oblige the Parole Board to reconsider its previous decision if required by the Home Secretary or his Ministers; in other words, the Home Secretary or his Ministers can require reconsideration of any relevant Parole Board decision in respect of which the Home Secretary has concerns. I suggest to your Lordships that this addresses very precisely the concerns that have been previously expressed by Ministers, most notably by the noble Lord, Lord Timpson.

So I suggest that the proposed new clause, containing as it does the important protection afforded by proposed new subsection (6E), addresses what is generally recognised to be a very serious injustice; and it does so in a way that safeguards the public interest. I very much hope that it will command the support of your Lordships’ House and thereafter that of the House of Commons.

My Lords, I too strongly support the Amendment moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. This amendment is the safest, best amendment on IPP prisoners we have seen so far. It would give an IPP prisoner a clear statutory steer as to what they have to do in order to secure release on licence. The prisoner would know that if they fulfil the board’s directions, they will be released on licence. It would give them a clear goal to aim for which does not currently exist.

If, therefore, the prisoner is serious about being released, this would be the best opportunity they have had so far. It would be heavily incumbent on the Prison Service to ensure that the IPP prisoner has access to any purposeful activity or other requirements set out in the Parole Board’s directions. This must be an absolute priority.

Above all, the final decision on whether it is safe to release the prisoner would rest with the Parole Board, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has said. Proposed new subsection (6E) in Amendment 76 is the key provision, which is new and leaves the final decision with the Parole Board. That is what the Government, in resisting resentencing options, have said time and again must be the case: the Parole Board must have the final say. Well, here we are with this amendment, so what possible reason can the Government have for not accepting it? It is not good enough to say it will give IPP prisoners false hope. That is tantamount to saying that some IPP prisoners will never be released. This would be completely unacceptable.

This Government have responsibility for every day an IPP prisoner is detained and the despair that this causes. They must urgently consider every reasonable option for ending this disgraceful situation. This is the most reasonable option yet which is now on the table. It must be tried.

My Lords, we have heard three excellent speeches in support of this Amendment, which was again introduced most powerfully by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, as it was in Committee when he said, if I recall correctly,

“we will have … blood on our hands if we do not do anything about this situation.

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which I am glad to say the Government are still committed to, forbids

“torture or … inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

But surely that is what the Government—the state—are subjecting IPP prisoners to. I would like to hear why the Minister considers that there is no breach of Article 3 in this case.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, said, we have to take a measure of risk, but the beauty of this amendment is that it builds in the safeguards so as to mitigate the risk as much as possible. It is not possible to eliminate every possible risk that a released IPP prisoner might commit another crime. It is also impossible to eliminate any risk that a determinate sentence prisoner might commit another crime. Presumably, the Government are terrified about the newspaper headlines if a released IPP prisoner commits another crime. We all fervently hope that that will not happen. It is not possible to say that it would never happen, but the Government cannot continue to incarcerate people unjustly on that basis.

The Minister has to tell us today whether he thinks it reasonable to carry on keeping these people in prison in breach, I would contend, of Article 3 of the European convention. I am afraid to say that the Government do not have the backbone to take on that relatively slim risk of appalling headlines in the press. It would be a terrible situation, and we would all feel dreadfully for any victim, or the family or friends of a victim. That is why all these safeguards would be built in. For the Minister to tell us on behalf of the Government that they would rather people continue to be tortured by unjust incarceration than take on the responsibility of a Government to manage a reasonable risk and account for their actions and behaviour to the public, then I am sorry but they should not be in government.

It is completely unreasonable to carry on as we are. As the noble and learned Lord said, we hope that at the 11th hour we will hear a reasonable and statesmanlike reply from the Minister.

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, set out with great clarity the cogency of his proposed new Clause. I entirely support it and, if he wishes to test the opinion of the House, I shall join him.

Many of the amendments in the group we are dealing with are concerned with providing a mechanism through the Parole Board. My Amendment proposes another new clause that would not use the Parole Board but rather a panel of existing or former judges. The protection to deal with the risk that people seem to be fearful of is provided through that route rather than through a Parole Board decision.

I will come to explain the detail of my proposed new clause, but I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, who is not in his place, for their support for this new clause. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said a moment ago, it is uncontroversial that nobody of any humanity or sentience thinks that this IPP regime was a good idea or should be allowed to continue—and continue to cause harm. When the Minister winds up, will he admit or accept, on behalf of the Government, that the IPP regime as currently administered is causing real harm to people in prison and on licence outside prison, who are in danger for reasons wholly unconnected with the original offence that gave them the IPP in the first place? Will he accept that it is doing our reputation as a place of fairness and justice real harm? There is not an angle from which you could come at this problem without feeling dirty and appalled by the way in which it is being continued.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and I looked at 60 sets of case papers dealing with IPP offenders who had all been recalled. A large proportion of them had been recalled for relatively trivial reasons. A large proportion had been recalled for reasons that had nothing whatever to do with the index offence for which they had been originally sentenced. They had returned to prison, and some of them had been released again after a period and then re-recalled, thus extending the ludicrous, Kafkaesque nature of this type of sentence. As Lord Brown said all those years ago, it is a stain on our justice system. It is uncontroversial that where we are now is a disgraceful state of affairs, and it ought to be dealt with.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, cited in general terms some of the information provided to us by UNGRIPP, of which I am a patron. It is an interest group of families of IPP prisoners seeking to reform this regime. As the noble and learned Lord said, 946 people have never been released from their IPP sentence. Of that 946, 940 are in prison over their tariff limit, and 689 are incarcerated between 10 and 20 years beyond their tariff. These are numbers, but they describe real people and real families who are affected by this disgraceful state of affairs.

Just to underline the point about real harm, I note that 1,476 people are currently back in prison on IPP recall. Some 70% of those were recalled for an administrative reason—they failed to turn up for an appointment or they were drunk—but that had nothing whatever to do with the original offence, as I have said any number of times, nor had they committed an additional offence. One thing I learned from the study I did with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was that, if you are going to recall somebody by virtue of another form of misconduct and it amounts to a criminal offence, they should be prosecuted. They should not just be pulled off the street administratively; they should be charged, tried and sentenced or acquitted on the evidence. There should not be this sneaky little business of just pulling them off the street in an East German or Soviet way.

But that is enough of the figures; let me go back to my new clause. Where I differ from the method advanced by the noble and learned Lord and my noble friend Lord Hailsham is that our new clause would require a panel established by the Secretary of State

“to reconsider the cases of every person subject to a sentence of imprisonment for public protection … and in custody within six months of the date” on which the Bill is enacted. The panel would consist of 12 judges or former judges under the age of retirement who have sat in the Crown Court, and they would be nominated to serve on the panel by the Lord Chancellor. But while I think that proposed new subsection (6E) is the magic subsection in the noble and learned Lord’s new clause, my proposed subsection (3) is the one that I invite your Lordships to concentrate on, because it introduces a degree of thinking about what is proportionate into the question that has to be discovered.

Subsection (3) reads:

“As soon as practicable after the establishment of the panel, a member of that panel— so, it will be one judge at a time, not all 12 sitting in a group—

“must reconsider each case and determine whether, having regard to … (a) the nature of the person’s offending”.

Let me say in parenthesis that there will be some people serving an IPP sentence who may have been held to be dangerous because they have committed, for example, a double rape or a vicious, violent assault. But there are some people on IPPs who have done no more—I say “no more” in inverted commas—than commit a street robbery and stolen, with violence or with the threat of violence, somebody’s mobile telephone. They may have done it several times. Yes, that is very bad behaviour, but some of these people, having been given a 12-month or 18-month tariff, are still languishing in prison 20 years later. Is that what we call justice in this country?

Let us bring some sense of proportionality back to the assessment of the offender. Look at the period spent in custody; look at the risk to the public. Of course, we all worry about what risk is and how to assess it, but we have to make an attempt to assess the best, or the least worst, way of mitigating that risk. We either do it through the Parole Board, or we do it, it seems to me, through this judicial panel, but it has to be done. We cannot just sit on our hands and say, “It’s all too difficult”. If it is 10 years too late, if it is five years too late, if it is five weeks too late, if it is five days too late, if it is five minutes too late, it is too late, and we must do something right now.

The judge on the panel would have regard to

“the arrangements that can be made for supervision, rehabilitation and support in the community”.

Many of these people have become catastrophically institutionalised as a consequence of being imprisoned all this time. Just imagine that you have been bunged inside for robbing a person of their telephone—a relatively minor offence in the great canon of criminal affairs—and there you are, 20 years later, possibly having been recalled because you failed to turn up to an appointment at a parole or a probation office, asking yourself, “What on earth is the point? I will either take my own life or I will live in this place till the day I die of natural causes”. Let the panel, let the judge, look at what can be done with regard to supervision, rehabilitation and support outside prison.

If noble Lords are worried about that, the panel judge does not have the final decision, because his or her decision is susceptible to judicial review, and if the Secretary of State does not like it, he can refuse to accept the recommendation. And the Secretary of State’s decision is susceptible to judicial review.

There are different ways of dealing with risk, but whatever way you go at it, you have got to do it. Really, one must stop dallying around and saying, “It’s all too difficult and the Daily Wotsit won’t like it if somebody gets out”. We are bigger and better than that, and we should do something about it.

I have been anxious about this for many years, but anxiety does not save lives or get justice to these people. It might make me feel good, but what makes me really angry is Government after Government flunking it and failing to be brave—but rationally brave, not reckless. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, is presenting the Government with a way forward; so am I. Pick one or pick your own, but for God’s sake do something.

My Lords—

My Lords—

It is time for this side. Forgive me, but I think it is time that we heard—

I am not “this side”.

Forgive me.

I want to be brief, because the speeches have been eloquent and passionate. All the bases have been covered, but in the absence of, for example, my noble friend Lord Blunkett, whose amendments I signed, it is important that someone from the Labour Benches conveys the concern that persists in the Labour Party. That includes people who are incredibly loyal to the Government and incredibly proud of the Minister, my noble friend Lord Timpson. The anxiety and concern at this profound injustice is very live and real.

I support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, and other aspirations and amendments in this group. I agree that administrative mechanisms have not been enough. They do not show the signs of being enough to prevent more suicides and self-harm from what the noble and learned Lord put very well as having been a collective miscarriage of justice. When miscarriages of justice are perpetrated by the judiciary, there are appeal mechanisms and even executive pardon mechanisms to deal with them, but this was perpetrated by the political class: by the Executive and the legislature.

To the credit of the coalition Government, the IPP sentence was ended, but the response in relation to those already incarcerated was inadequate. These people, frankly, rot in prison. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, put it very well: some of these people have now been incarcerated—some even without any release—for offences that would never have justified life imprisonment. They are decades beyond tariff. This is unconscionable, and something must be done.

I know very well from regular meetings and from all the engagement and work that my noble friend Lord Timpson is doing that he is committed to getting these people out, if at all possible, but administrative mechanisms do not seem to be enough. I hope he will forgive me for saying that, in these meetings and in that engagement, some of us have observed even institutional intransigence in some parts of the institution about dealing with this. Frankly, this was a legislative disaster and it will require a legislative solution. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to make this 11th-hour concession. That may prove difficult— I do not know—but, at the very least, I would hope that he might consider a free-standing Bill that the Government could bring forward, with cross-party support, to provide a mechanism to deal with the remaining relatively small number of people suffering this profound injustice.

Administrative mechanisms and “wait and see” are plainly not going to work, not least because of the point about zero risk that was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, earlier this evening and has come up in a number of speeches. There cannot be zero risk. There is not zero risk with people in the mainstream population who have never been convicted of an offence so, of course, there is not zero risk in relation to this cohort. Any risk that they pose has probably been exacerbated, as was put by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, by this appalling state-sponsored miscarriage of justice of collective proportions.

It is time for all of us to play our part on a cross-party basis, which is why I shall be listening as anxiously to the reply from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, opposite. This is a political problem and an institutional problem, and it will take good will from all sides to deal with it. We spoke earlier about the purposes of imprisonment. The legitimate purpose of imprisonment was never supposed to be political point-scoring, yet that political point-scoring has created all sorts of problems that have escalated in the past three decades, so I hope that there can be some olive branch offered from that side of the House as well.

I know that the Minister is committed to justice and has proved in his extraparliamentary life what can be done with genuine courage and a commitment to turning people’s lives around. This, I know, is on his mind. I am asking him to consider a legislative response, rather than just leaving it to administration, because that has not been sufficient. I support the approach of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, but there is a lot in what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said too. It is perhaps a shame that we did not have a single offering, but I firmly believe that there will have to be a legislative offering, ideally from the Government. Otherwise, this stain—the word of my dear friend and former mentor, the late Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood—will carry on, perhaps beyond our own lifetimes, and I for one would be seriously ashamed of that.

My Lords, there are amendments in this group in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. He has asked me to say that he is mortified that he cannot be here today and that he sends his apologies to the House that he is not able to be here to move them.

I have my own Amendment in this group, Amendment 78, which is carried forward from Committee. It is a very modest amendment making an administrative change that relates only to prisoners who are out on licence, to make it easier for some of them to discharge their licence. I am delighted to say that it had a reasonably good welcome in Committee from the Minister and that he has brought forward his own amendment, the government amendment in this group, which effectively does what I was proposing in my Amendment 78, so of course I have no intention of moving that and I encourage noble Lords to support the government amendment in this group.

Turning to the main question, we have the essential problem. I am not here to beat up the Government. I say straight away that there are difficult issues here for Ministers, and not just Labour Ministers. I have seen very good people as Conservative Ministers struggle with the same issues in the past, and that would be true if they were Ministers from other parties. The issues are genuinely difficult because of the question of public protection. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, complete protection of the public is not possible. The way in which we try to maximise protection for the public in these cases is through having decisions about release made by independent bodies, in particular by the Parole Board. Ministers of both parties have been very clear that nothing is going to happen, and nobody is going to be released, unless it is with the say-so of the Parole Board.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, has crafted his amendment very much with that in mind. The Parole Board follows certain procedures, and those procedures are not fixed in stone, it seems to me. The procedures, of course, are up for argument. The fact that it is the Parole Board that must decide is not up for argument, but how the Parole Board works can legitimately be up for argument.

What the noble and learned Lord has done is try to change those procedures, to change the emphasis so that the prisoner is given an incentive to engage with the Parole Board: an incentive that, if certain things are complied with within a certain period, the Parole Board will say yes, rather than the current system, where the prisoner goes through hoops and then finds out afterwards whether the Parole Board is going to say yes or no.

That is a shift in balance; it is a change merely in the way that the Parole Board works. However, just to make 100% certain that the danger to the public is not increased, the noble and learned Lord has, of course, included the measure that he mentions, whereby the Parole Board can rescind any such conditional offer if it finds that it is not working out.

It seems to me that the Ministers should be able to have an open mind about a proposal such as that, because it does not touch the red lines that they are so concerned about. It is merely a change in the way the Parole Board approaches its task, but one that has a better prospect of success.

Similar remarks could be made about the proposal from my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier. Again, the independent body in this case would be a panel of judges, or a judge operating from a panel, and again, the Secretary of State would have a final say—the Secretary of State could override it at the end—so there would be a fail-safe built in.

I think it is fair to say that either of these mechanisms would have a dramatic effect in altering the balance. While there would still be some prisoners, I frankly admit, who probably would never meet those criteria, or at least not without a great deal of work, it would start to address that residue that is finding it very difficult to move, and it would do so in a way that does not cross the Government’s red lines.

I have every sympathy with the Minister who, as other noble Lords have said, has worked extremely hard on this. We are trying to make it as easy as possible for him to be able to embrace some sort of change, while protecting public safety. I hope that he can step forward and say something positive that we could carry forward for the future. If the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, chooses to divide on this amendment, I would feel obliged to follow him into the Lobbies, but I would much rather hear it said by the Minister that he will be able to find that compromise that would allow all of us to work together in this direction.

My Lords, the case has been made clearly and persuasively, with no significant objection, but it is a difficult issue of public policy. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, said, there is a risk—there is this downside risk of a case that will make headlines in the newspapers—but that has to be set against the certainty of the harm that this policy is causing to many people at the moment.

We know that. It is well attested, and my noble friend the Minister knows that full well. So we have to accept the risk and embrace the opportunity to greatly help people who are suffering in our prisons from this policy. I will listen with care to my noble friend’s response to the debate. I very much hope that he will be able to give us some hope, but I will find it difficult to join my colleagues in the government Lobby.

My Lords, clearly it is wonderful to hear from the Labour Benches, because I know from private conversations that there is a lot of concern about this. It is a morally indefensible position to say that we are not going to do it because of public opinion, or because a newspaper might pick it up and run a bad story about the Government. There are enough bad stories about the Government; I am sure it would get lost in the confusion.

What we have in front of us at the moment are essentially two clear ideas. I signed the Amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, but equally I will support the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, because clearly we need to move forward and this Government have to understand that we are not going to give up. It is unbelievable that we are still talking about this. Has it been years—I have lost track—that we in this House have more or less agreed we have to do something, yet the Government’s intransigence has just shocked us all? I do not think we have a choice: if this amendment does not pass, or if it does, we will still persist, we will still keep raising it and we will still keep pushing the Government, because they are in the wrong.

My Lords, I was schooled in this subject, if I was schooled at all, by the late noble and learned Lords, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and Lord Judge. They both took me through this and were absolutely certain in what they were saying: noble Lords will have heard Lord Brown’s verdict that this is possibly the greatest stain on our judicial system. As the Minister knows, I feel very strongly about this, and indeed joint enterprise.

But the thing that I would like to talk about very briefly is proportionality. I am very attracted both to the solution from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and to that from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. Earlier, we heard the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, arguing very eloquently and successfully on Amendment 74. Equally, we heard the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, putting a very strong case from his point of view. But the fact is that some of the people in prison for this are not in prison for things anywhere near as serious as the things that noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, mentioned and that the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, said would be okay, because they would be carefully scrutinised.

There are people serving endless sentences who were originally sentenced only to 18 months in prison. They are still there. Their families are still concerned. We have to look at proportionality. What were they originally sentenced for? How long were they sentenced for? How does that colour the views of the Parole Board or judges? I think that is an essential point which leads us to feel shame: people are in prison for very minor offences compared with rape and murder, and are there on an original sentence that was relatively minor compared with those for murder and rape. So we really do have to look at this.

I will not go on any longer. I just implore the Minister to use the mercy and clemency he has shown so clearly in dealing with the prison system in this case. There is a unanimous feeling around the House: nobody yet has gone against the point we are all making that something has to be done.

My Lords, to start with, I would just like to point out that the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, is undoubtedly personally committed to resolving this issue. Nobody, I think, is making any party-political points and nobody is personally having a go at the Minister. But that is not sufficient for us to go home with tonight. We still have to say that, regardless of how honourable and wonderful the Minister might be, IPP has dragged on. So I will be voting for the Amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, but since he spoke so brilliantly to start this debate, all the speeches have been as though I have never heard the subject before. I feel like crying, I feel like screaming. In other words, this is an incredibly important scandal that gets to you every time, and gets to members of the public every time when you share it with them. They are equally appalled; they cannot believe it.

One of the points that I noted from the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, is that it will make the indeterminate determinate; there will be an end in sight. Apart from anything else, never mind the sentences, I feel as though this debate is indeterminate and going on for ever, because I seem to have repeated it endlessly. When I heard UNGRIPP making the point that for the current decrease in the IPP prison population it will take a minimum of 11 years to release everyone currently on an IPP sentence—that is, 31 years since its introduction and 24 years since its official abolition—you do think, “It’s got to end”. Nobody is doing this as a joke or a game to just make the same kinds of speeches.

Amendment 96, from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, particularly appeals to me. I am not always a fan of judges, it has to be said, but one of the things I like about it is that every single prisoner would be looked at, and each and every circumstance would be considered. That is very important, because there have been times when it has been made to sound like one size fits all—you know what I mean, release them all or what have you. This has the advantage of taking into consideration every single circumstance and what particular prisoners would need. I think that is very important.

Something that I do not think has had enough mention tonight is that in some instances the resolution is that a prisoner will need to be transferred to a hospital, and it might not be straightforward to release them from hospital. They might be very seriously ill at that point. But the main thing would be, because the end would be in sight, if they were ever well enough to be released from hospital, they would not then go back to prison on the IPP sentence that very often has made them ill in the first instance. I want to quote a psychiatrist who said, “How do you motivate somebody to take part in treatment at a hospital if the outcome of that is effectively to facilitate their return to prison?” That is a terrible tragedy.

I will just finish with an anecdote, because it makes the point. Rob Russell, who is on an IPP sentence and in prison at the moment, was sentenced in 2009 for making threats to kill his former partner. I hope I have illustrated today, when I have spoken, that I am not a fan of being soft on perpetrators of domestic abuse. This is somebody who threatened to kill his former partner. He was sentenced in 2009 and has never been released. He is now in hospital. I want him to get well, but I do not want him to go back to the IPP sentence. Can you imagine if he gets well and goes back to prison? He could be on the same landing as somebody who has been convicted for domestic violence, not threats but actually committing violence against their partner: but as that person is on a standard determinate sentence, they could be offered early release—“Earn your way to release”—but Rob will not be, whereas he actually just threatened. I honest to God think that is grotesque.

The Minister today, who I am a great admirer of, justified the risks of freeing people early who have been violent on the basis of freeing up space in prisons, because we have to protect victims and give them space. IPPers might well present a risk when they are freed into the community, but, as has now been explained, so will all those people on early release that we have just discussed all day. There is no doubt that something will happen with some of them. I do not wish it; I just know it. The fact that those serving an IPP sentence have to prove every time that they will never do anything again is ludicrous. If I was Rob, who has been mentally ill, and I had to compare myself with this person who is getting out early, the sense of frustration and hopelessness would honestly make my mental health deteriorate again.

So I simply think that it has to end and we have to do whatever is required. The Minister would be helped if it was legislative. Whichever amendment works, works for me; I will vote for it. This cannot carry on. I know that is too melodramatic. I just mean that, genuinely, this needs to end. It is grotesque in the context of this Sentencing Bill, releasing people for a wide range of reasons when we cannot release people who are in prison decades after their tariff for minor things, and we will not even look at assessing each of them to see whether they might be safe beyond the IPP Parole Board. It is just ridiculous.

My Lords, I co-signed Amendment 76, from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and shall support it. The amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, would achieve the same outcome. Either amendment would right this injustice. The present position is simply cruelty.

I have very little to add to the speeches, all of which have been principled and humane. Across the House, noble Lords have gone to great lengths to acknowledge and address the risk of further offending while seeking to end the appalling injustice of the continued indefinite incarceration of IPP prisoners. My noble friend Lady Ludford referred the House to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and challenged the Government to come forward with a response to the human rights case. There is none.

I simply do not understand the reasoning behind the proposition that we cannot or will not release IPP prisoners when prisoners serving determinate sentences are entitled to be released, and are released, at the end of their terms. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, pointed out, resistance to ending this injustice fails to balance the actual harm of the present regime to IPP prisoners against the possible risk of further offences by a released IPP prisoner. The Government have a duty to balance risks and harms. On this issue, the balance is between the actual harm to IPP prisoners and the theoretical but possible harm that is risked by releasing them.

As we have heard, subsection (6E) of the proposed new Clause in Amendment 76 would leave the Parole Board in charge. It is more than reasonable. Justice and humanity demand that we end this.

My Lords, these amendments address the most complex and sensitive of legacies in our sentencing framework. Few issues illustrate more clearly the challenge of balancing public protection, fairness to victims, management of risk and the injustice to individuals who have already served far beyond their original tariff. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, correctly pointed out that there is an issue here of proportionality; we seem to sometimes lose sight of that.

Amendment 76 does not provide for automatic or immediate release. Instead, it would require the Parole Board, where it does not direct release, to fix a future release date, subject to conditions intended to ensure public protection but also to instil some element of hope. The amendment would preserve a central role for the Parole Board, including, of course, powers to issue directions, vary release dates and reconsider decisions where public safety requires it. The inclusion of time limits seeks to balance progression with caution, though views may differ as to whether these limits are set at the right level.

These are complex judgments, and reasonable views can differ on how best to reconcile rehabilitation and public protection. These proposals represent a thoughtful attempt to impose coherence and fairness on an area of law that has become impossibly difficult, while attempting to keep public protection firmly in view. I hope that the Minister will engage constructively with the principles underlying these amendments and explain how the Government intend to address the long-term sustainability of the IPP regime. The status quo is untenable.

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their amendments on IPP sentences and for their impassioned speeches this evening. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, kindly said, I share their commitment to addressing this issue with compassion, evidence and tenacity. I thank the many noble Lords who have participated in debates, meetings and discussions on this issue. I am grateful for their challenge and support, both in your Lordships’ House and at our Peers meetings, which I plan to continue in the future.

It is with great pleasure that I have been able to table Amendment 91. I have seen the impact that this sentence has had on those serving it, and their families, over many years. This amendment delivers on my ambition to offer a faster and safe route to the end of their sentence. It provides a target for those serving the sentence to aim for. It strikes the right balance between rehabilitation and public protection, and I hope noble Lords will support this carefully considered and constructive step forward. Most importantly, it provides hope to those serving the IPP sentence, and their families, which, as my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton rightly said, is so important.

Changes made in last year’s Victims and Prisoners Act have seen over 1,700 licences terminated in November 2024 and the number of people on licence falling by around two-thirds. Crucially, I have heard from Parole Board members, and seen for myself, that these measures have given much needed hope to those on IPP sentences. Amendment 91 builds on that progress. It allows IPP offenders’ licences to be terminated after two years in the community, rather than three. Early analysis indicates that up to 100 people could be positively impacted by these termination changes. This change provides suitable time for support and rehabilitation in the community, while ensuring our communities are protected from harm. Amendment 91 allows a further application for licence review one year after the qualifying period, where the licence has not been terminated and no recall has occurred. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, whose amendment inspired this change.

I thank my noble friend Lord Blunkett for his ardent determination to tackle the challenges of the IPP sentence. We agree with his suggestion in Amendment 77 of a two-year qualifying period. However, we do not agree that the qualifying period for DPP offenders should be reduced. DPP offenders who entered custody as teenagers have missed critical life stages such as education, employment, relationships and independent living. The Probation Service plays a key role in providing the sustained support they need to build the stability and skills necessary for safe reintegration. Shortening the qualifying period would significantly reduce the support mechanisms available to the offender and increase the risk to victims and the public. It could lead to difficulties for the probation officer in making a comprehensive referral, and for the Parole Board in determining whether it is safe to terminate the licence. It may therefore lead to fewer decisions to do so.

I turn now to Amendments 84 and 85, proposed by my noble friends Lord Blunkett and Lady Chakrabarti. IPP offenders can be recalled only for behaviour or breaches of their licence that are causally linked to their offending. In practice, this means where the public is at risk of further sexual or violent offending. This is a higher bar than those serving standard determinate sentences. At the point of recall, the controls available to the Probation Service are no longer sufficient to manage that risk to keep the public safe. Automatic release, before offenders have received the required support to reduce their risk, would put victims and the public at risk. Recalled IPP prisoners can be released where their detention is no longer necessary for the protection of the public. Many recalled IPP offenders have already been re-released under the RARR power introduced in the Victims and Prisoners Act, when they were due to wait for many months before their scheduled hearing before the Parole Board. Through the IPP action plan, HMPPS is considering all IPP offenders recalled for being out of touch, or in relation to allegations of further offences, for RARR. For cases where RARR is not appropriate, it is rightly for the independent Parole Board to decide whether it is safe to re-release an individual into the community.

On Amendment 76, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, we acknowledge the considerable scrutiny given to the issue by the Howard League for Penal Reform, led by the noble and learned Lord, and its June 2025 report. I have carefully considered all the recommendations, one of which was to provide a release date for all IPP prisoners. Providing IPP prisoners with a release date within two years would include prisoners who the Parole Board has determined, in many cases repeatedly, are too dangerous to be released. This would pose an unacceptable level of risk to victims and the public and runs counter to the first duty of any Government: to keep the British public safe from harm.

The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, suggested that the Government do not have the backbone to face adverse newspaper headlines. With respect, this is a travesty. The Government’s concern is wholly and solely for the safety of victims. The Government do not believe that allowing the Secretary of State or the Parole Board to set aside a release date is sufficient, as it remains based on setting a future date for release.

I know it is not what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, nor the noble Lord, Lord Carter, wants to hear, but the Government consider it vital that prisoners are released only if they meet the statutory release test. To reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, the Parole Board already reviews every single individual IPP case at least every two years, and in many cases more regularly.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, my noble friend Lord Woodley and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for tabling Amendment 96. Noble Lords have contributed greatly to the work on the IPP sentence, and I welcome their expertise and passion in this area. I share the noble Lords’ ambition to release IPP prisoners as soon as the risk presented is manageable in the community.

However, our view is that the panel proposed by this amendment would replace the Parole Board’s remit. The Parole Board is made up of judicial members, as well as members with specific experience in areas such as psychology and psychiatry. With these backgrounds, and the IPP taskforce that the board has set up, there is considerable experience in reviewing and managing IPP prisoners’ cases. I am looking forward to inviting the Parole Board to our next IPP Peers round table.

The current release test already requires the Parole Board to direct release where it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public for the offender to be confined. Therefore, the Government cannot see how this amendment would result in an increase in IPP prisoner releases.

We will implement changes that provide hope and finality, where it is safe to do so, but we must resist changes that would intolerably increase risk to victims or the wider public. Alongside legislative reform, I continue to turbocharge the IPP action plan. The Prison Reform Trust recently welcomed the progress that has been made under the IPP action plan, while rightly emphasising that there is still more to be done.

For the first time the IPP action plan includes measurable targets. We have committed to improving access to release on temporary licence, expanding approved premises for resettlement support, and enabling swift rerelease following recall through RAR where it is safe to do so.

We are not giving up hope on anyone on the IPP sentence. That is why HMP Aylesbury is in the process of creating a bespoke unit dedicated to supporting IPP prisoners who are struggling to progress in their sentence. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hastings, who commended this work after his recent visit. All these measures are contributing to a decline in the unreleased IPP population—down 14% since June 2024.

I hope that the Government’s amendment and our wider work assure noble Lords of our determination to support all those in prison to progress towards a safe and sustainable release. I will continue to work closely with noble Lords towards this goal, but I urge the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, in which the views, save that of the Minister, have been unanimous across the House. The unanimous view is that something needs to be done in the interests of justice.

It is justice that lies at the heart of this debate. One of the cardinal principles of justice is treating everyone equally before the law. If you stole a mobile phone from someone in 2005 or 2014, you ought to be treated in exactly the same way if you committed that offence during the period of this misconceived sentence. Failing to do that is to condemn people to injustice and to perpetuate it. It is no excuse to say, “Well, they were under a sentence passed by the courts”, when everyone has agreed that that sentence was wholly misconceived; nor is it an excuse to say there is a risk that they are more dangerous, because the psychiatric evidence is unanimous in the view that the form of sentence has made that danger greater.

On the Amendment and what it tries to deal with, I am very sorry that those who provided the briefing to the Minister did not understand the change that had been made to the proposals I and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, put forward, because neither required a two-year release. There was a safeguard put in. What we proposed would have protected the public to the extent that they are and must be protected.

I would hope that we could give people hope. I do not believe, from what I have seen—as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, has said, from the files he reviewed—that this can be solved administratively; it needs legislation.

I, therefore, with deep regret, feel it necessary to test the opinion of the House. In doing so, it is important to bear in mind what Lord Lloyd of Berwick reminded the House of in 2014: Winston Churchill said many years earlier that

“one infallible test of any civilised country is the way it treats its prisoners

I hope we will not fail that test. We need to do justice to those in prison. I therefore would like to seek the opinion of the House on Amendment 76.

Ayes 41, Noes 97.

Amendment 76 disagreed.

Amendments 77 and 78 not moved.

Clause 29: Further release after recall: other offenders eligible for automatic release