My Lords, it is a privilege to rise in support of my old boss, the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere—one of the finest government lawyers I had the pleasure of working for and learning from in the late 1990s. He served Governments of both persuasions with such distinction that he went on to become the first ever counsel to No. 10, such was his expertise in these and other matters. It is wonderful to see him deploy those skills, including in the devastating way in which he has just argued for his two amendments in this group.
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As a matter of principle, in the previous group, the Minister made the case for executive recall. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, has made the equal, opposite and logical case for executive release. To err is human. Where there has been an executive recall in the sorts of circumstances to which the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, referred—for non-criminal or non-dangerous conduct, or sometimes for conduct that could not even be impugned because it was no fault of the licensee—why should the Secretary of State not have the equivalent, equal and opposite power to release humanely and sensibly, without risking the public? I say not just to the Minister but to my
noble friend Lord Ponsonby that no Government need be afraid of having the power to release in circumstances where they had the power to recall in the first place.
I need once again to wear the other hat and the rather tall shoes of my noble friend Lord Blunkett. He asked me to mention in particular his Amendment 158 in this group. Here again, with some considerable commitment and rather forensic precision—aided by our wonderful colleagues in your Lordships’ Library—he has picked up on an anomaly that he seeks to address. Clause 48, in whatever final form it passes, ought to be applied not just to IPPs but to the earlier policy of two strikes. Some noble Lords may remember that, even before the IPP sentence, this policy led to similar injustices, under Section 2 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997. It was subsequently replaced by IPP.
Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, is not in his place. At the time, I was serving him as a government lawyer. It was part of the whole ratchet on law and order between two major parties that began in the late 1990s, I am sorry to say. The idea was that, if someone committed a second offence from a list of prescribed offences in the provision, they got life. They did not collect £500 or pass “Go”; they just went to prison for life. There was no judicial discretion. Let this be a lesson to us all about removing judicial discretion in general and from sentencing in particular.
The nature of that straitjacket on the judiciary led to injustices that are not dissimilar in many cases to the injustices we now see with IPPs, with people detained disproportionately to the offence in the first place and for far longer than is required to protect the public. With his Amendment 158, my noble friend seeks simply to apply whatever Clause 48 regime we end up with to this earlier cohort of prisoners. No doubt, this is a diminishing number, but none the less they should have this level of enlightened humanity and justice as well.
My noble friend also supports the progression action plan proposed in Amendment 159. No doubt, other noble Lords will speak to it. Part of the problem with IPPs is that so many people have been stuck in a system that was supposed to offer them opportunities for rehabilitation and progress which, in practice, never materialised. To this, my noble friend adds the scrutiny panel proposed in Amendment 160. Along with other noble Lords, he seeks to amend the release test to direct that someone be released unless the Parole Board is satisfied that their detention remains necessary and proportionate to protect the public from serious harm. Again, that seems very sensible if we are trying to nudge this correction of historic error on a bit. My noble friend Lord Blunkett further supports my noble friend Lady Blower in her policy for mentors and advocates. As an educator, she is more than qualified to speak to that. He also supports the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, in her highly sensible proposal that there be more aftercare in relation to the DPP sentence. This has the injustice of IPP but is applied to people who were children at the time of sentencing.
These are my thoughts and those of my noble friend Lord Blunkett. Together, we support everything in this group.