Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I know that that is precisely what the Minister has said, but he is looking down the wrong end of the telescope. He fundamentally misunderstands the problem that he has got himself into. The answer is not to dilute the IPP system, but to ensure that that system works. If one overcrowds the prison system, one is required to do what the Government are doing, which is to require courts to increase the minimum tariff for IPPs. The better answer, and the answer that the Government could have come up with if they had not messed up the prison system, is to make available sufficient course places, rehabilitation places, and places on anger management and other necessary courses that IPP prisoners need to go on in order that they can demonstrate to the assessors that they are safe to be released. However, they are stuck because of the mismanagement and the consequent overcrowding. In order to relieve overcrowding, the Government will have to take these measures, which I believe are viewed from the wrong end of the telescope. The condition that the Government set in new clause 29 is that the minimum tariff of two years, which is the equivalent of a determinate sentence of four years, should be the hurdle below which a sentencing court cannot go. We are going to be left with people who may continue to represent a danger to the public being given determinate sentences of two or three years because the actual offence that they committed does not warrant more than that. They will be releasable after the 50 per cent. point, or even at some stage between the 50 per cent. and the 100 per cent. point; they will get released. The advantage of the indeterminate prison sentence system is that, even if prisoners have a low tariff, as long as they have demonstrated themselves to be unfit to be released because they still represent a danger to the public, they can be kept in. The court will, of course, take account of the nature of the original sentence, but it will also have in mind public protection by looking at the character of the information surrounding that individual. The Government are doing away with that. Therefore, people who have committed what I would loosely call, putting it in quotes—I do not want to be misunderstood—““less serious”” sexual offences and ““less serious”” offences of serious violence, if it is possible to have such things, will be given determinate sentences of under four years and they will be released at the end of that period. They will then be free to go out into the public and to repeat—