Worboys Case and the Parole Board

Ed Davey Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

Thank you for your guidance, Mr Speaker.

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his remarks. He makes an important point: had I taken a judicial review, it may have brought into question the standing of the victims, as Sir Brian Leveson points out. In terms of the workload, to be fair, the Parole Board had been making progress with the backlog of imprisonment for public protection cases, but it remains significant—there are still something like 3,000 prisoners on an IPP sentence in prison, and they need to be properly assessed.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

May I associate my party with the widespread welcome for the High Court decision and the congratulations to the two brave victims who brought this action? I also want to state for the record that I think the Secretary of State has acted properly throughout.

With respect to reform of the Parole Board, the Father of the House talked about the balance between accountability and independence. Because that is so tricky to get right, as we have seen, will the Secretary of State commit today to engage all parties in the House at an early stage, so that together we can strike an agreement on how to manage that balance?

[Mr Gauke]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. His point is about accountability and independence. There is a challenge here. I want to make it clear that I do not believe it is the role of Ministers to intervene as a matter of course in individual cases because they do not particularly like the judgment. I have made no secret of the fact that I did not like the Worboys decision, but I made an assessment and sought advice as to whether there was a legal route for me to take action and concluded that there was not. I believe that the Parole Board has to be independent, and I wish to maintain that, but I also think that a balance has to be struck, as the right hon. Gentleman says, and some weaknesses have been revealed in the Parole Board that we need to address.