Prison Sentences

(asked on 13th November 2023) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he plans to update his Department's action plan on Sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection.


Answered by
Edward Argar Portrait
Edward Argar
Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 17th November 2023

The IPP sentence was introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and abolished in late 2012 by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act. This abolition was not applied retrospectively, as the Government at the time took the view it would not be right to alter sentences that had been lawfully imposed prior to their abolition.

However, the Government continues to focus on the rehabilitation of those serving sentences of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) through a refreshed and updated Action Plan, published on 26 April 2023.

We are committed to reviewing the Plan’s scope and objectives every six months to ensure that the current actions remain appropriate and deliverable, having regard to HMPPS’s resources and wider responsibilities. The outcomes of the review will be shared as part of the promised IPP Annual Report, which will be published by the end of March 2024.

The actions we are taking are working; the number of prisoners serving the IPP sentence who have never been released now stands at 1,269 as of September 2023, down from more than 6000 in 2012.

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