Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I apologise to Lord Carter of Coles for getting his title wrong. I know that we all enjoy a joke from time to time, but we are now debating hugely serious issues which are being rattled through without proper consideration. Let me now deal with new clause 29, which I shall seek to use as a symbolic issue on which to divide the House. This whole group of new clauses troubles us, and contains issues that we think should be the subject of far more scrutiny and consideration. We trust that the other place will be able to give those issues that scrutiny and consideration. New clause 29 deals with sentences of imprisonment for public protection. I have visited, I think, 31 or 32 prisons since my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition appointed me to this job just before Christmas in 2005. The category of prisoner that causes prison governors, managers of prisons and prison officers the greatest difficulty is those adult prisoners who are on indeterminate sentences for public protection and who have got beyond their tariff. They are extremely difficult to manage. Their expectation when they were sentenced—most people do not listen to the sentence that they are being given—was that they would be released at or shortly after the minimum tariff. The problem is that, because of the Government's mismanagement of the system, the overcrowding in the system and the churning that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) spoke about, the individuals on IPP sentences cannot get on to the relevant courses to demonstrate to the Parole Board or the licensing system that they have reached a state of behaviour that allows them to be released back into the community.