Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I had intended to make a rather lengthy speech on this amendment, but in view of the time I shall cut it short. The Government have accepted that the effect of Sections 225 to 229 of the 2003 Act has been other than the expected. Mr David Hanson, the Minister in charge of the Bill, described the relevant provisions as well-meaning, but he then went on to say that they no longer serve a proper purpose. I agree, but I think that it is a serious understatement. In truth, the effect of the relevant provisions has been catastrophic. They are one of the major causes of overcrowding in our prisons today. Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, dealt with indeterminate sentences at some length in her very recent report. She described what had happened as a debacle. Does the noble Lord agree with that description? I suspect he does because there are now over 3,400 men in prisons serving indeterminate sentences, nearly half of them for relatively minor offences for which the tariff would be less than two years. The number is increasing at the rate of 150 a month. Many of those at the lower end of the scale have already completed their tariff, but they cannot get before the Parole Board, which would be their next step, for two main reasons. First, the Parole Board is grossly overburdened. The board estimates that if things go on as they are, they will need to make room for a staggering 4,000 hearings in 2009-10. The word ““staggering”” is not mine but is that of Anne Owers. Secondly, those who wish to go before the Parole Board cannot do so because, as the prisons are so overcrowded, they cannot get on to the training courses that they need to complete before they can apply to the Parole Board. As the Lord Chief Justice said in a recent speech, we cannot go on like this. Happily, the Government have now at last recognised the mistakes that they made in 2003, hence Clauses 13 to 17 of the Bill, which go a certain way in the right direction, but not, in my view, anything like far enough. That is the purpose of my later amendments. I must turn to the Conservative Opposition. What is their attitude to all this? Do they support the Government in their belated attempt to do something about the crisis in our prisons or do they not? I regret very much to say that the answer must be that they do not. Of course, they are entitled to say, as they do, that overcrowding is all the Government’s fault and that they should have built more prisons. Of course, they can make, and are right to make, a strong political point about prison building, but the crisis in prisons is now too serious and too urgent for political point-scoring of that kind by either side. In a recent speech, the Lord Chief Justice called for a national debate on the whole question of prisons and sentencing. He added this warning: "““Such a debate will be of no avail, indeed it will probably not be a possibility, unless those taking part are prepared to put to one side the opportunities that this subject always provides for scoring political points and to consider, objectively, what is in the best interests of our society””." Surely it is now up to the main political parties to put aside their fears of being thought soft on crime and to think instead of the injustice being done to those serving indeterminate sentences for minor crimes without any certainty of being able to put their case before the Parole Board and who are now, therefore, without any hope of early release. Above all, we must not make the situation worse by adding to their number, which is what would be the effect of Amendment No. 81. The purpose of that amendment, we are told, is to leave Section 225 as it is, to remove the proposed threshold of two years. If so, the indeterminate sentence will remain available for those who have committed quite minor crimes. If that is the purpose, it will only make overcrowding worse. The Conservative Opposition are moving in the wrong direction and I oppose the amendment. I add one last point. The effect of the amendment may be something quite other than what the noble Lord assumes. If you leave out new subsection (3B), as the amendment proposes, the indeterminate sentence could be imposed only where the offender has previously committed a very serious offence such as murder or rape, as set out in Schedule 6, which covers only 22 very serious offences compared with the existing 153 offences under the old Schedule 5. So the effect of the amendment would be to reduce the number of those for whom an indeterminate sentence is available. If that is the effect of the amendment, as I believe it to be, though I may well be wrong, I would support it. But I would still prefer to reduce the number by increasing the notional minimum term from two to four years. In the mean time, I wait to hear whether my reading of the effect of the amendment is as I say.