Peter Bone
Main Page: Peter Bone (Independent - Wellingborough)Department Debates - View all Peter Bone's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Clarke
I agree with my hon. Friend. It is far more sensible to have an appropriate determinate sentence, and serious sexual and violent offenders—those serving longer sentences—should go back to having to serve two thirds before being eligible for release. Indeed, if the Parole Board thinks that they should not be released, they should probably serve their whole term. That is far superior to the lottery of the IPP that we have at the moment. I strongly agree that we must do something to encourage the many people in the voluntary sector who want to work with ex-offenders and can successfully help those who can be rehabilitated to get themselves out of a life of crime.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Parliamentarians on both sides of the House will welcome not only the Secretary of State’s statement, but the whole process. To be helpful to him, I wonder whether he could solve the economic problem overnight by sending the 11,000 foreign nationals incarcerated in prisons in England and Wales back home on a plane tomorrow and forget their human rights.
Mr Clarke
There are some measures in the consultation on the release of foreign national prisoners after they have served their tariff and conditional cautions for people who go away on the basis that we will not let them come back. Those are intended to reduce the rather ridiculous proportion of foreigners in the prison population. We are working with the UK Border Agency on the difficult problem of how to get people out of the country when they have no papers and the receiving country will not take them. My instincts are entirely those of my hon. Friend’s. It is quite absurd that 13% of the prison population are foreign nationals and we must work to get that figure down.