I ask the Minister to respond to that. Let me make a further point about the right hon. Lady’s intervention. The Science and Technology Committee was told in evidence—I think by Professor Shute; I hope I have that right—that when recommendations were made, it was rare to the point of being zero that the Parole Board went against the recommendation. That might or might not indicate that the Parole Board was not reading the evidence as it had been presented to the board. It is easy just to take the recommendations.

Let me turn to third parole case that, as a constituency MP, I spent a lot of time on a few years ago. Thirty years ago today, Suzanne Capper had a funeral and was buried after having been tortured for a week and murdered. I was not an MP 30 years ago, but it was in my constituency. She attended the school that I had attended many years before. It was a horrific case. Four people were convicted of her murder; three have been released, and one is up for parole. In the 1960s, the four people found guilty would have been hanged. I am against capital punishment, but I want the public to have confidence in the justice system. They were guilty of a crime every bit as horrific as the moors murders—Brady and Hindley were never released. Even though three of them have been released since I made representations to the Parole Board on behalf of Suzanne Capper’s mother, which were effectively ignored, I believe that one of the murderers should not be released.

When people learn that three of the murderers, and potentially a fourth, will be walking the streets of this country after that terrible murder, they will not think that justice has been done. I would like an assessment not just of how the Parole Board operates but of who is considered for parole. I do not think those murderers should have been. Although one cannot just use the general view that they should not be, I think there is a sense, when people such as that are walking the streets of this country, that justice has been undermined and has not been done.

Those three cases have brought me, as a constituency MP and as somebody who has been watching what has happened to the Parole Board, to consider that the Parole Board should be reformed in many ways. When the Science and Technology Committee took evidence, virtually all the witnesses said that the Parole Board previously operated in private—in secret. Sometimes it made decisions just on the papers in front of it, sometimes it listened to the criminal, and sometimes statements from the victims were read out. We all accept in court cases that justice must not only be done but should be seen to be done, but that has not been the case with the arguments the Parole Board considers. There may be a case for keeping some privacy, because victims and their families may be mentioned, but when a decision is taken to release back into the community somebody who has done appalling things, the public are entitled to know what the basis for that was and what the arguments and evidence were.