My Lords, seldom can there have been such an array of distinguished supporters for any amendment, and all I seek to add is some very short footnotes.
There are principles of immense worth and significance that are associated with this issue, one of them being, as so many speakers have pointed out, that there is no such thing as an irredeemable prisoner. I remember the very first day that I came here, which was about 33 years ago. A very distinguished judge had said that, in his vast experience, he had not thought that prison had reformed anybody at all. I remember thinking then about the exact wording of Rule 1 of the Prison Rules 1964. The wording was that the prime purpose of punishment should be the reform and rehabilitation of the prisoner. That is not now placed quite as high—it is now third on the list—but it still occupies a prominent place. To deny the prospect, remote though it might be, of redemption and the even more remote prospect of release—this will operate only in a very few circumstances—would be to deny one of the basic tenets of our concept of justice and punishment.
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The noble Lord, Lord Davies, said that it is dangerous that a political officer—that is essentially what the Home Secretary is—should have this awesome jurisdiction
in his or her hands and that such a person is open all the time to political pressure. I am not sure that that point is totally fairly made. It is not a question of whether such a person is open to political pressure but whether he is the right sort of person, holding the right sort of qualifications, to make that decision at all.
I was a junior Minister in the Home Office about 46 years ago, so I well understand how Home Secretaries have said to themselves, “This office has been the repository of substantial judicial discretion from time to time”. One has to think only of the awesome power that a Home Secretary had to determine whether a person should be executed or have the sentence commuted to a life sentence. Therefore, there is that tradition, which it may be difficult to shed overnight; I understand that. Nevertheless, it has to be shed, because it is a decision that must be made by a judicial or quasi-judicial body and nothing else.