Given the time available, I will concentrate on some specific aspects of this very important Bill.
I welcome the approach taken by the Minister and by the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State, whom I am delighted to see on the Front Bench. Their constructive approach has improved the Bill considerably. I am particularly grateful to them for having taken on board, in a large number of aspects, the Justice Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Victims Bill, as it then was, and our September 2022 report on imprisonment for public protection sentences. They have moved and I very much welcome that. I particularly appreciate the efforts the Lord Chancellor has made personally to engage with me and members of my Committee.
It is worth saying that IPP sentences remain a blot on the justice system—not my words, but those, dare I say it, of my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor. We want to try to remove that blot as much as possible. We need not rehearse the history. Whatever the intentions, the scheme did not have the desired effect. Indeed, it had the effect of creating real injustice to such an extent that this House, with cross-party support, abolished IPP sentences as long ago as 2012. What we did not do was remove the sentences retrospectively, so we now have a situation where there are still some 2,600 people in prison with indeterminate sentences that we as a House think are not appropriate and do not work. The noble Lord Blunkett, the author of the scheme, said in another place, “I got it wrong” and that we need to put it right. Against that honesty from the author of the scheme, I hope the House will reflect that we ought to grasp the nettle.
There have been major changes, and we should recognise the Government’s good intent, in relation to the licence situation. As the Minister observed, these go beyond our recommendations. I appreciate that, and it will make a major change for very many prisoners. Our Committee took evidence from more witnesses than for any other inquiry and published a report of some 62 pages about how the licence provisions were setting people up to fail. Because they had a lifelong sword of Damocles over their head, their rehabilitation was inhibited.
Indeed, we heard compelling evidence about the negative impact on their mental health and ability to reintegrate into society.
Reducing the wait for a lifelong licence to be removed from 10 years to three, with the extra possibility after two further years, is a major reform, and I am grateful for it, particularly as there are more people who have been recalled to prison on their licences than there are those serving their original sentences. That is important but, with all due respect to the Government, I do not think it goes far enough, which is why I want to persist, if possible, with my new clause 1—and, in setting out the reasons for doing so, to address the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) from the Opposition Front Bench.
This is not about an immediate opening of the prison gates. I can understand people’s perfectly proper concerns about public protection, not least because many of those incarcerated on these sentences will have suffered real mental deterioration while in prison, as the indefinite nature of the sentence gives them no hope, and so will potentially be in a worse state, in terms of public protection, than when they went in. It would be unfair and unrealistic to pretend that new clause 1 would lead to the immediate release of every person in this situation. It is much more considered and modest than that, and would set up a process whereby an independent panel would advise on how best to embark on a resentencing exercise. That is an unusual thing, but the existence of the IPP sentences, without any retrospective change, is an unusual thing, too.
This was recommended to us as the logical option by the noble Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, a former Lord Chief Justice. Against the background of his eminence, I think the new clause warrants better consideration than we have yet had. If new clause 1 is not supported in this House tonight, I very much hope that the other House will look at it again and that the Government will continue to engage on it, because it would not lead to an immediate release of anybody. It would, though, set in train a process to enable everyone to be given a determinate sentence. That seems to me only fair and just, and I hope that we can look at that going forward. It cannot be just or accord with our sense of fairness that we should have people serving sentences in some cases 10 years in excess of their tariff, which is out of all proportion to the sentence that the judge at the time thought was appropriate for the index offence, as we call it.
There are other important parts of this Bill—which I am afraid I do not have time to touch on—that I also welcome and hope will be taken forward. In particular, I welcome the changes to parole, which are a much more balanced set of measures now than they were when the Bill was originally brought forward. I know that the Lord Chancellor and the Minister have acted personally to improve the Bill in that regard. I thank them for that, but I ask them still to reflect upon the position on IPP sentences.