My Lords, Amendments 4, 5, 8 and 16 relate to the obligations imposed on the Parole Board by Clauses 3, 4, 5 and 7. Clause 3 adds terrorism and explosive offences to the category of the enhanced dangerous offenders sentencing scheme. Cases will be referred to the board for a decision about release instead of offenders being eligible for automatic release after serving two-thirds of their term. Clause 4 extends this to all such offenders serving extended determinate sentences. Clause 5 applies a similar provision to other offenders convicted of serious crimes, as listed in the schedule, who will be subject to discretionary rather than automatic release between the halfway and end points of their sentence. Clause 7 creates a new release test for recalled prisoners to be applied by the board under which the Secretary of State or the board has to be satisfied that it is highly unlikely that a prisoner would breach a condition of his licence.
All these measures are likely to increase the pressure on an overstretched and underresourced Parole Board. The Government estimate an increase of 1,100 hearings
a year by 2030, rising by an estimated 50 next year, 400 by 2020 and ultimately requiring an extra 1,000 prison places. As the Prison Reform Trust points out, the Ministry of Justice has form in these matters. When indeterminate sentences—IPPs—which we will be debating later were introduced, the ministry, under a previous Administration, estimated an increase in the prison population of 900, but by the end of last year 5,335 people were serving IPP sentences, two-thirds of them beyond their tariff date.
This was in good measure a result of the failure, frequently commented upon in this House and beyond, to provide the necessary resources to the Parole Board to prepare people for release and rehabilitation. As the Prison Reform Trust reported, offending behaviour programmes are scarcely available and limited in their scope and effectiveness, and it is inherently difficult to demonstrate reduced dangerousness and pass the high safety threshold for release. That was in 2010, when numbers were smaller and staffing greater. Moreover, as the Prison Reform Trust points out, the Government’s impact assessment of the provisions of the Offender Rehabilitation Act estimated that 13,000 offenders would be recalled or committed to custody a year, leading to an extra 600 prison places being needed. Have the Government looked into the real impact of the Offender Rehabilitation Act on this situation to date and as anticipated in the near future? Further, what assessment have they made of the effect of the recent Supreme Court judgment in the Osborn case requiring the board to hold more oral hearings, which last December alone had increased by one-third in indeterminate review cases to just under 400 in a month and to 90 in indeterminate recall cases?
The board warned in its annual report, as it appears from today’s Daily Telegraph, that the number of oral hearings could increase from 4,500 a year to as many as 14,000, and at an additional cost of £10 million. What is the Government’s response to this estimate? The Minister has apparently indicated that an extra £3 million will be allocated to the Parole Board. How does that square with the board’s own estimate of the potential cost? What is the Government’s estimate of the impact on prison numbers and on the work of the board of the Secretary of State’s latest headline-grabbing decision that no prisoner may be transferred to an open prison if he or she has previously absconded, which is apparently already building up a backlog of Parole Board hearings? How do the Government expect the board to cope with these pressures when it has already lost 20% of its staff and when its members are now having to use an unreliable video link system to conduct hearings—another example of the problems associated with rushing headlong into the all too frequently costly and inadequately tested application of IT and electronic systems?
All this is set against a background of massive overcrowding in many prisons with the attendant problems that that poses for prisoners and staff, and with the system too often being pared back to one of simple confinement. The chief inspector has spoken of dangerous instability in the prison estate and has pointed out that despite some recent high-profile cases, there is a very low failure rate for release on licence. Further questions arise over the Government’s apparent intention, as
reported in the Times on 21 June, to transfer responsibility for the administration of recall cases to the magistrates’ courts. Can the Minister tell us whether this is the Government’s policy, because of course the report may be wrong, and if so, what consultations have taken place with the Parole Board, the Magistrates’ Association, the judiciary and other interested parties? Is there an intention to pilot such a concept before rolling it out?
It really is time for the Government to adopt less of the kind of muscle-flexing populism that is so often exhibited by the Secretary of State and more of the considered approach we have come to expect of the Minister. These amendments are designed to ensure that the Parole Board is fully engaged with any plans to implement these measures and that Parliament has an opportunity to scrutinise and approve their implementation on the basis that the necessary resources will be made available to ensure that the pathway to rehabilitation is properly and securely paved. I beg to move.