Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I fear that I will not be able to explain the whole network without irritating you, Mr Speaker, but the Ministry of Justice has funded 44 separate projects in conjunction with the Corston independent funders. I have already answered the question about what will happen to the funding after March. We will continue a degree of funding—not on the scale that has happened before, but we are identifying the projects that are working best, which we will wish to continue to support.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

12. What assessment he has made of the effects on public protection of releasing those with indeterminate prison sentences who have completed their minimum tariff.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

Prisoners serving indeterminate sentences who have completed their minimum tariff are released from custody only if the independent Parole Board is satisfied that the risk of harm that they pose to the public is such that it may reasonably be managed in the community.

[Mrs Chapman]

The Secretary of State will be aware that inmates serving indeterminate public protection sentences will have committed some of the most severe offences. Often, the reason they are not released after their minimum tariff is that they still pose a great risk or have not been able to complete the rehabilitative courses that are available. Will he either spend more money on rehabilitation inside prisons or change the method by which risk is assessed?

[Mr Clarke]

We addressed this problem in the Green Paper, on which we are consulting. It is quite obvious that the IPP system has never worked as either the previous Government or Parliament intended. Indeed, the previous Government made one attempt to revise it to stop the unexpectedly large numbers of people who were going into the system. IPP prisoners are almost all high-risk, and they should be released only once they have been assessed by the Parole Board, but of course it is extremely difficult to form judgments about the risks that they pose when they are in prison and sometimes unable to access rehabilitation courses. We published our proposals in the Green Paper and are now consulting on them, but we have no intention whatever of putting the public at more risk by releasing people without some assessment by the Parole Board. However, it has to be a sensible assessment that can sensibly be made.