The government has been warned not to be “on the wrong side of history” as the plight of prisoners trapped under indefinite jail terms was compared to the Post Office Horizon scandal, Windrush and the Infected Blood inquiry.
In an impassioned bid for the government to resentence almost 2,700 languishing under abolished Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) jail terms, Labour peer Lord Woodley called for them to “end this scandal and give hope at long last to the hopeless”.
“History is being written right now, and my plea to government is this, don’t be on the wrong side of history,” he told the House of Lords during the second reading of a bill to resentence IPP prisoners after 90 have taken their own lives in jail.
“Don’t wait for the ITV drama to cast you unfairly as uncaring, cold hearted time wasters who left damaged people, many of them broken by the state, to rot away in prison while those in power stood by wringing their hands.”
Despite the intervention, prisons minister Lord Timpson said the government is refusing to support any form of resentencing, despite at least 700 IPP prisoners having served more than 10 years longer than their minimum term.
He told the Lords that prisoners should work towards release through a refreshed IPP Action Plan, announced today, which campaigners dismissed as “not worth the paper it’s written on”.
Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Ludford cited three injustices revealed by The Independent, including the case of James Lawrence, who is still in prison 18 years after he was handed an eight-month jail term for threatening someone with a fake gun.
She also referred to the case of Thomas White, who set himself alight in prison after serving 12 years for stealing a mobile phone, and prisoner Yusuf Ali, who spent 61 days on hunger strike as he lost hope of ever being freed from his IPP jail term.
She challenged: “So what is this government going to do, keep these people locked up arbitrarily and indefinitely, just like in Guantanamo?”
Comparing the situation to other “horrendous injustices”, she added: “How many scandals have to be endured by the citizens of this country before a government finally says, no, we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the Post Office Horizon scandal or Windrush or infected blood or Hillsborough or Grenfell.”
The indefinite jail terms, which saw offenders handed a minimum term but no maximum, were introduced by New Labour in 2005 in a bid to be tough on crime.
They were abolished due to human rights concerns in 2012, but not retrospectively, leaving thousands languishing in prison until they can prove to a parole board they are safe for release.
It has left thousands of IPP prisoners trapped as their mental health deteriorates, including many who were jailed for minor crimes, under a sentence branded “psychological torture” by the UN.
The architect of the flawed scheme, Lord Blunkett, has led calls for reform after admitting he regrets introducing them when he was Labour home secretary.
He said “I carry my responsibility heavily” as he implored the government to consider a “halfway house” of partial or prioritised resentencing if they will not accept “wholesale resentencing”.
This could be carried out by a panel of by a panel of retired senior judges to avoid adding to the court backlog, he said, adding: “We’ve got to get this sorted.”
The Bishop of Gloucester also called for the prisons minister to think again on resentencing, while Baroness Burt of Solihull, a Lib Dem, challenged him over the government’s position.
“Is he seriously suggesting we leave them in limbo in a constant state of psychological torture forever?” she said.
Lord Timpson told the chamber he was determined to support IPP prisoners, noting he had employed 30 people serving the sentence in the community as CEO of Timpson’s.
However he insisted the government will not consider resentencing any IPP prisoners because it would lead to the release of prisoners who had previously been turned down by the parole board. He said this would put “the public at an unacceptable risk of harm, which the government is not prepared to countenance”.
He laid out the government’s refreshed IPP Action Plan to help prisoners progress towards release, including prioritising IPPs for transfer to the right prisons to undertake courses. Other measures include the introduction of an internal progress rating – described as a traffic light system – for each prisoner, which will be reviewed every six months.
However the measures have been dismissed as cruel and “simply not good enough” as figures published in the first annual report on the sentence show the rate of release is “glacially slow”.
Meanwhile, recalls to prison for breaches of strict licence conditions have risen, and the mean time served on each recall has soared to more than 25 months.
Lord Woodley, who backs The Independent’s campaign for all IPP prisoners to have their sentences reviewed, said: “It [the refreshed Action Plan] is a positive step but simply not good enough to address this industrial-scale miscarriage of justice.”
Campaigner Richard Garside, of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said the recall figures show the IPP sentence is reproducing like a virus, adding: “When you are faced with a virus you need a vaccine, and the vaccine is resentencing.”
Reformed IPP prisoner Marc Conway, who was one of the heroes of the Fishmongers’ Hall terror attack, said the Action Plan will never work in a prison system which is overcrowded, underfunded and under resourced.
“No matter what plan you put in place, unless the prison system is running appropriately and functioning how it’s supposed to be then it’s not worth the paper it’s written on,” he added. “The prison system is a system not fit for purpose.”
Campaigners from UNGRIPP said they were “extremely disappointed” the government has ignored an opportunity to address the injustice.
“The IPP sentence was abolished almost 12 years ago,” a spokesman said. “Attempting to fix it by trying to progress people through an overcrowded, broken system so many years after the sentence was abolished is just cruel and adds to the injustice.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “It is right that IPP sentences were abolished, and we recently terminated the licences of 1,742 rehabilitated offenders.
“This government is determined to do all we can to support the remaining IPP prisoners – with new tailored plans for those struggling to progress. This includes urgently ensuring all IPP prisoners are in the best prison to access the rehabilitation support they need.”
