Rehabilitation and Sentencing

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on a reappraisal of what might be termed the classic Conservative attitude towards penal policy over the past decades. I exculpate completely, of course, the noble Lord and his party in respect of that, but that is another matter. On the question of indeterminate public protection sentences, does the noble Lord recollect that when the 2003 Act was passed, it was estimated by Ministers that the prison population would increase by 900 in respect of that piece of legislation? By this year it had increased, as the noble Lord has already said, by 6,000. The most tragic aspect of that is that 2,500 of those are persons who have already served more than the recommended period of imprisonment that was mentioned by the sentencing judge. That is a denial of justice. It is a totally impossible and unacceptable situation. What are the Government going to do about that? Are they going to increase the size of the Parole Board, which is the sieve through which these cases must pass? Are they going to relax the rules? Or are they going to act in some other way? Those, I respectfully suggest, are indeed fundamental questions that the Government have to answer at this stage if this issue is to have any credibility. As I say, I congratulate the Government on doing the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons.