Justice Committee 

Oral evidence: Work of the Parole Board, HC 415

Wednesday 18 October 2017

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 18 October 2017.

Watch the meeting 

Members present: Robert Neil (Chair); Mrs Kemi Badenoch; Ruth Cadbury; Alex Chalk; Bambos Charalambous; Mr David Hanson; John Howell; Laura Pidcock; Victoria Prentis; Ellie Reeves.

Questions 1 - 109

Witnesses

I: Professor Nick Hardwick, Chair, Parole Board for England and Wales, and Martin Jones, Chief Executive, Parole Board for England and Wales.

II: Sam Gyimah MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice.

Written evidence from witnesses:

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Professor Nick Hardwick and Martin Jones.

Q1                Chair: Good morning, everyone. Professor Hardwick and Mr Jones, thank you very much for coming to give evidence to us. We will start the evidence session by asking members if they have any declarations of interest to make. I am a non-practising barrister and consultant to an oil firm, but it does not do any work in relation to the parole system at all.

Victoria Prentis: I am a non-practising barrister but I used to do a great deal of work for the Parole Board. I was in the Treasury Solicitor’s department, and we did all the Parole Board judicial reviews for many years.

Mr Hanson: I have known Professor Hardwick in a personal capacity since we were at university together. I think it is important to put that on the record.

Alex Chalk: I am a practising barrister.

Ruth Cadbury: My husband was at university with both Professor Hardwick and Mr Hanson.

Ellie Reeves: I am a non-practising barrister.

Chair: Before we digress into everybody else’s personal history, I will come to the subject of the meeting. Thank you very much, Professor Hardwick and Mr Jones, for coming to give evidence to us. We are conscious that you have been in post since October 2015, Mr. Jones, and since March 2016 in your case, Professor Hardwick. Some of what we aim to ask may go back beyond that, but I know you will be aware of the background.

We are obviously interested initially in the situation relating to the current workload and the backlogs, and trying to speed that along. We have seen the data provided historically. Can you help us with the latest figures you have for your outstanding cases and your backlog?

Professor Hardwick: First of all, thank you for having us and giving us the opportunity to talk to you today. The latest figure—Martin will correct me if I am wrong—is 1,296. We think we can meet the target of 1,200 by the end of the year.

Q2                Chair: The recall cases are not part of the backlog, are they?

Professor Hardwick: No.

Q3                Chair: Do we know what the figure is around the recall cases that are outstanding?

Martin Jones: Probably the best figure to use when looking at the recall cases is how many cases are currently waiting for a parole hearing. That gives you a really good indication. That number has come down very significantly over the last year in particular. About 500 cases are outstanding and waiting for a listed hearing slot. In relation to the number of people waiting beyond 90 days, that has come down to less than 100 cases, which is a real indication that we have got right to the bottom of some of the delays that we have seen.

Q4                Chair: That is a considerable shift from where things were.

Martin Jones: Absolutely.

Q5                Chair: Your staff ought to be congratulated on that.

Professor Hardwick: Our staff and our members have done a tremendous job to get that down. I want to be clear with the Committee right from the start that it is not just about getting the numbers down and helping people progress. Our primary duty is to protect the public. What is at the front of our mind all along is, “Is it safe to release this man or woman?” We have a serious further offence rate of less than 1%. That is quite small, but terrible for the people involved. I do not think you can measure the Parole Board’s performance simply in terms of how we get on with the backlog or how we get on with the IPPs. I certainly think we have a duty to victims, both of the original offence and potential future victims, for them to know they are at the forefront of our minds, and they are.

Q6                Chair: Historically, 1% is very low indeed for SFOs and compares well with some other sectors. When you set the target for reducing the backlog, how did you come to that? Was any particular formula used, was it a rule of thumb, or what?

Martin Jones: It was very much rule of thumb. When I arrived in October 2015, the backlog was still at an incredibly high level. I thought it was really important that we set ourselves a target for getting us back to where we were before the Osborn judgment arrived. At the point of the Osborn judgment, the number of outstanding cases was around 1,200. Our plan was to get us back to the pre-Osborn position as quickly as we possibly could. That was our starting point. It was not particularly scientific, but I always think you should set quite an early goal and then, hopefully, you should get to that objective.

Professor Hardwick: We have been very focused on getting that number down. There are lots of other areas where the Parole Board might need to improve and do things differently, but it is fundamentally unjust if you are kept in prison simply because of administrative delays in the system. We try to keep a very clear focus on an achievable and quite crude target. Once we have got that down, maybe we can do something a bit more sophisticated. We just wanted to get the basics in place as a foundation from which we could build in future.

Q7                Chair: As I recall it, the Osborn judgment created an enormous surge.

Professor Hardwick: Yes.

Q8                Chair: Was the Parole Board given any extra resource to cope with that?

Martin Jones: Initially, we were given some extra resources, but one of the things that was certainly picked up by the National Audit Office report was the number of members on the Parole Board. That fell quite significantly over the period. In essence, we were almost doubling the number of hearings that we had to have with a diminishing membership. Last year, getting a significant improvement in the number of members was absolutely crucial to some of the improvements that we are now seeing.

There was also a limit in relation to oral hearings. We know that they are significantly more expensive than paper hearings. That was certainly placing pressure on us. This year, there has been a difference in the resources, and that has enabled us to make greater progress.

Q9                Chair: It seems to have been a positive decision not to recruit new members between 2012 and 2016.

Professor Hardwick: Certainly if you talk to my predecessors, they were very anxious to recruit. The number of members was dropping through natural wastage. They were not allowed to recruit and that caused them a great deal of frustration. Of course, it was economically counterproductive because, as the backlog grew, the compensation payments grew, and the work still had to be done at some stage. We are very grateful that Ministers eventually decided that we could make that change, and we have done that.

It is also worth saying that we are not quite at the end of the process yet. We have got the new members in, but getting them all up to speed so that they can do their job safely and efficiently is still work in progress.

Q10            Chair: Understood. As you say, that was a ministerial decision that was reversed when Mr Gove became Secretary of State, as I understand it.

Professor Hardwick: Yes.

Q11            Chair: Are you going to try to get a target beyond December 2017, or is it part of that more refined process?

Professor Hardwick: I want a different sort of target beyond 2017. It seems to me that the critical thing—whether you are a prisoner or a victim—is that your hearing should happen when it is scheduled. You should know when your hearing is going to be. You should not have to wait for that to happen. If, for any reason, it has to be deferred or adjourned, the reasons for that should be clear and defensible. It is more about timeliness and how long people are waiting than a crude how many people are waiting. There will always be some people in the system. There will always be a frictional number, so I think we need a more sophisticated measure than we have had up to now.

Q12            Victoria Prentis: Do you think you have got better at spotting problems coming your way? The Osborn judgment appeared to come as something of a surprise. I do not think it did to those of us who worked in that sphere. Do you think you are better at asking for more resource in advance now?

Martin Jones: I think that is absolutely right. Our planning cycle now is looking at what we think our workload will be over the next two or three years. That is enormously helpful. One of the things we are particularly concerned about is the IPP numbers. We expect them to come down over the next few years as we get to the bottom of that problem, but we have an extended determinate sentence problem. That is a new sentence type that was introduced in 2012. We need to ensure that we factor that into our plans going ahead. Certainly, our workload cycle is to ensure that we keep a consistent lid on the number of cases going through over a sustained period, but also that we look at what is going on in relation to the challenges we are facing so that we can better predict some of the challenges we might be facing in the future.

Professor Hardwick: What we try to do is develop better working relationships with some of the other key agencies on whom we depend. There was a sense of silo working before. We need to keep an appropriate distance and it is important that we are independent, but now we have much better working relationships with the Prison Service, the probation service and the other people on whom we depend. We then have a whole system view, rather than each of us simply defending our own patch.

Q13            Victoria Prentis: Do you think that is the key lesson you have learned from your re-prioritisation pilot?

Martin Jones: I think that is absolutely right. The Secretary of State has a power to executively release some recalled prisoners. That is a power that traditionally has been used very little, but for some lower-risk people we have been suggesting that the Prison Service should quickly review those cases and executively release them. The numbers there have more than doubled over the last couple of years. If you were not executively releasing them, you would have to send them to the Parole Board and we would then have to put them through the oral hearing process. We have regular conversations with the Prison Service in relation to the appropriateness of cases referred to the Parole Board. We want to focus on the really serious people, where there is a question of risk to the public.

Q14            Victoria Prentis: Are you content with the amount of resource that has been available to enable you to do your job at the moment?

Martin Jones: The resources that we have this year are adequate for what we need. Obviously, there is a long-term planning process. My challenge, I guess, is to ensure that we pitch in relation to the value of what the Parole Board brings to the system. We have very open ears on that question.

Professor Hardwick: On the question of resources, Martin is right. The critical issue now is not the resources for the Parole Board, provided they are sustained. The critical issue is resources for the Prison and Probation Service that is feeding people into the Parole Board, so that we get prisoners who are ready to be assessed, with the information we need. If we decide that someone is safe to release, provided that they are properly supervised and supported, we need the resources in the community—approved premises or other mechanisms—to provide that support.

The issue now is not resources for the Parole Board, provided they are maintained. It is the other ends of the pipeline—how people come into the Parole Board and how people exit—where the problems are.

Q15            Victoria Prentis: We have some very impressive figures. You were doing 522 cases a month in 2013-14. Now it is 705 a month. Do you think you can do more than that?

Martin Jones: I think we are already doing more than that. This year, on average, we are listing 750 hearings a month. In July, we listed 822 hearings, which was a record high. We expect to continue that throughout the course of this year, so that we absolutely get to the best possible performance figure. We expect to reduce the number of hearings next year to ensure that we maintain an equilibrium.

Q16            Victoria Prentis: But there is a plan.

Martin Jones: Absolutely.

Q17            John Howell: I want to move on to the deferral rate for oral hearings. We have seen that it went up to about 39% in the last year. Why has it gone up?

Professor Hardwick: That is the biggest challenge we face. I do not think that 39% figure is acceptable. There is a variation across cases. It is of course a complex problem, and we need to be careful about how we deal with it. First of all, the figure actually includes deferrals and adjournments. An adjournment is where a member might say, “Look, I have not had the information I need to make a decision now. I am going to keep hold of the case. I want you to come back to me in three months’ time with this or that.” That is a positive thing, because whereas before they might simply have said, “No, okay, you aren’t ready to be released” and the prisoner would have gone right back into the system, now, by hanging on to it for a bit longer, it means that the prisoner may be able to progress. In the past, that would not have been the case.

It is proper that people do not make a decision if they have not had the information they need to assess the risk properly. I would not want to encourage people to say, “Look, make your decision at any cost. Never defer things.” However, having said all of that, the deferral rate also reflects inefficiencies in the system and in the way information is provided to us. There are still some inefficiencies in the way we are working, so we are at fault for some of this and we need to improve. There are some inconsistencies among members about what level of information they think they need and how willing they are to press ahead. There is stuff for us to sort out, and I would say that at the moment it is probably our No. 1 priority.

Q18            John Howell: I will come back to some of those factors in a minute. If you were looking at a fully efficient system, what do you think the deferral rate should be?

Martin Jones: My background is in the Courts Service, where there is a long history for the ineffective trial rate. I think the plan was to halve the ineffective trial rate of 10 or 15 years ago. I would certainly expect that in a fully efficient system the deferral rate should be less than 25%, and perhaps nearer 20% would be a more acceptable figure. Then the question would be the balance on adjournments. What I would not want members to do is to close off cases unnecessarily without looking at the progress of those individual cases.

Professor Hardwick: I would be very cautious, if I might say so, about having a target on that figure. I would not want members to think, “Look, we are not hitting our target, so I had better press ahead with this decision and make the decision, although I haven’t got the information to do it properly.” We can have a view, as Martin says, about where we could get to, but each decision needs to be made on its individual merits rather than on the corporate requirements, in a sense.

Q19            John Howell: If we look at some of the reasons why we have that deferral rate, how much is due to reports not being ready on time?

Professor Hardwick: Certainly it would be a significant proportion. One of the issues at the moment is that we do not have enough information about precisely how that all breaks down. That is one of the things we need to work on. We cannot say precisely what the issue is, but that would be a significant part of it.

Martin Jones: Normally, about half our cases would be deferred because of reports not being available. One of the things we have been trying to do over the last six months is to give greater notice for hearings. We list a bit further ahead, giving the Prison Service, the probation service and psychologists who might be providing the reports a month’s more notice of the hearing. That gives them additional time. Obviously, if you are listing the hearing six or seven weeks away, it gives you a limited period to do the reports. We think that should drive improvements over the long term.

Q20            John Howell: With so many reports outstanding, that is not a particularly good situation to be in, is it?

Professor Hardwick: No.

Q21            John Howell: How are you going about tackling that problem?

Professor Hardwick: There are two aspects. One is about working with the agencies that provide the reports, to make sure that we get what we need on time. There is also an issue for members about making sure that, when they ask for a report, it really is going to add value to their decision making. We need to tackle both ends of that to be successful.

We certainly want to make sure that, if a report provider cannot provide it on schedule, we know about the delay in good time, so that if necessary we can postpone the hearing in good time and schedule something else to take its place. The worst of all possible worlds is that we get to a hearing, there has been some confusion and we find that we do not have what we need on the day of the hearing. That is crazy.

Q22            John Howell: You have just highlighted one of the difficulties, which is that you are waiting for third parties over whom you have no control to provide you with information. Given that you have no control over them, what influence are you using to try to persuade them to come up with the goods?

Martin Jones: There are two things. Obviously, the problem is, essentially, at court, so our directions should have some real force and we expect people to comply with those directions. Nick and I regularly pick up problems with direction compliance with senior people in the probation service and the Prison Service. That is quite important.

We are now working with six prisons, potentially, to look at the lowest deferral rate you can possibly get, and almost bringing in a mindset of everybody working to get to the best possible performance in the system. We are doing some really good work with Berwyn prison, which will provide a real opportunity to see how we can get the best possible efficiencies in the system. Of course, it costs everybody a lot more money to keep people in prison for significantly longer.

Professor Hardwick: If you look at the legislative structure within which the Parole Board operates, in the end if it is supposed to be a court-like body, we need greater powers to direct that the reports we need are provided. At the moment, we can cajole, we can ask and we can talk to people at the top, but sometimes that does not work in the way it should. I encourage our members to be very robust about getting the reports they need on time. If they are not getting them and the delay is unreasonable, they should expect the managers, or the people concerned, to come and explain why the delays have occurred.

Q23            Chair: It is a bit like the approach we have seen in the courts themselves, where we have case management.

Professor Hardwick: It is important to have constructive working relationships, but in the end we are not simply fixing up a meeting to which people may or may not want to come. This is a court-like tribunal, and you are required to attend and do what we ask of you.

Q24            Chair: And therefore there should be some sanctions.

Professor Hardwick: Absolutely.

Q25            Ruth Cadbury: What reasons are given for the delays in these key reports coming forward to you?

Professor Hardwick: As I said earlier, I have some sympathy with the providers. It is about the resources they have. That was my point earlier. If you have extra resources available, I would put them into the front of the system.

Q26            Ruth Cadbury: Could you give some examples?

Professor Hardwick: I will give you two examples. Because of staff turnover, the person from whom the report was commissioned is simply no longer in post and able to come or do the work. There are issues around psychology reports, where there are simply not enough psychologists to do the work that is getting pushed in their direction by different people.

We are trying to do work—Martin can say more about this—to allow witnesses, for instance, to attend remotely so that they do not have to make a long journey to the prison where the hearing is taking place. They can do it from their office. For that to happen, it requires the technology to work effectively at both ends.

I have some sympathy for the staff concerned who have not done their reports, but on other occasions the Parole Board needs to put its foot down more firmly and insist. Doing work for the Parole Board is not an option; it is a requirement.

Q27            Chair: I understand that. I get the impression anecdotally that prisons are running restrictive regimes, which must make it very difficult for people to get out and so on.

Professor Hardwick: It is not simply a question of the report. There is also the question of whether the prisoner has had the opportunity to do the work we required that would demonstrate that his risk had been reduced. That might be a programme. For instance, has he or she had access to the right sort of programmes? One of the issues members talk to me about is whether the prisoner has had the opportunity to do ROTL, for instance, which would demonstrate that they are more trustworthy. Some of that is within the control of the prison; some of it is around ministerial policy that needs to change.

Q28            Chair: What would be the policy that needs to change?

Professor Hardwick: ROTL. When I was chief inspector of prisons, I was very critical of the way that ROTL was operating at that time. I reviewed some cases where things had gone terribly wrong.

Q29            Chair: That is release on temporary licence.

Professor Hardwick: Yes. The answer to the problem is to manage the system better, not arbitrarily to restrict it in a way that means we sometimes have to release people without properly testing them in the way we would ideally like, through release on temporary licence. The current arrangement has not made the public safer.

Martin Jones: Building on what Nick said, there is a question in relation to the use of open prisons. Some prisoners are prevented from going to open conditions because they have a history of abscond. If you are testing an IPP prisoner for release and they absconded 15 years ago, it is still quite hard for us to say that open conditions may be in the public interest in some of those cases.

Q30            Victoria Prentis: When you have concerns such as that, what is the mechanism to share them with Ministers?

Professor Hardwick: I meet Ministers on a reasonably regular basis. I met the Secretary of State just a couple of weeks ago. Secretaries of State change quite regularly, so getting that done on a consistent basis is quite difficult. I meet the Prisons Minister on a regular basis, too.

Q31            Ellie Reeves: Going back to an issue you mentioned earlier about recruitment of members, my understanding is that there was a significant drop between 2010 and 2016, from 284 to 171 members. Why did it take so long to recruit new members?

Martin Jones: When I arrived as chief executive that was my big priority. You could see that the numbers would not be working over the next couple of years unless we really accelerated the recruitment process. There was a feeling that we needed to concentrate on our new processes to build on the Osborn judgment, and some of the planning should have taken place a bit earlier in that period. We should have started the recruitment process in 2013-14. That is what I would have done if I had been there at the time, but I can understand the reasons why people were focusing on some of the other issues they were facing at the time.

Professor Hardwick: To add to that and to be clear, these are public appointments. They are not Parole Board appointments; they are public appointments. Decisions about recruitment are ultimately made by Ministers.

Q32            Ellie Reeves: There was a recruitment drive in 2016. A lot of those who have been recruited did not start until this year, and actually it is going into next year. What is the reason for that?

Professor Hardwick: There is a balance to be struck. The new members have to be trained and supervised by existing members. We wanted to make sure that our system did not come to a halt because all our existing members were training all our new members. We tried to let a steady flow of new members in so that we could both continue to deal with the cases as they arose and keep getting the backlog down and train the new members. The resource we had to do that was our existing members. We had to work out how we could use them to the most effect.

Q33            Ellie Reeves: In relation to the amount of work that members do, there is a minimum commitment but it is not monitored. Why isn’t what board members are actually doing monitored?

Professor Hardwick: Up to now, frankly, we have been grateful for anything anyone is prepared to do, so you might say that we have been pretty crude about it. If you are willing to work, then we chuck work at you. That has resulted in some members perhaps not doing as much as we would like, but we are not going to get rid of them if they are doing some. A more serious problem is some members doing too much. That is bad for them and not efficient for the system, because then they struggle to keep up. One of the key advantages of getting new members in is that we will be able to have a better spread of work across the membership, and we will be able to monitor and manage the performance of members better than we have been able to do in the past. That is a key next stage for us.

Q34            Ellie Reeves: You will be moving to a system of monitoring what members are doing.

Professor Hardwick: Yes, much better than we do at the moment. We monitor it now, but in a fairly crude way. As I say, being frank about it, my view has been that, if you are competent and you are ready to do some work, we are grateful for what we can get.

Q35            Ellie Reeves: It seems to me that there is an issue, in that, if you do not know how much work members are willing to do, it is difficult to plan how to eliminate the backlog.

Professor Hardwick: We know how much members are doing at any one time. It is just that we are not jumping on them and saying, “You are not doing enough so you will have to go.” In relation to the way we are listing this process—how we allocate members to cases—the staff who do that are doing an absolutely fantastic job. I hear them and they work miracles on a daily basis.

Q36            Ellie Reeves: A related issue is that, if you have some members who are doing more than their fair share, that is going to present certain risks if, for some reason, they have to stop. How is that risk managed?

Professor Hardwick: We keep track of what is happening. For instance, one of the issues we have had up to now is a question not just of members but of accredited panel chairs. We have had a particular shortage with panel chairs. They have to write the decision after the case. A consequence of their being overworked is that some of those decision letters then get delayed. There you are as a prisoner or a victim, you have had your hearing and you are on tenterhooks. The letter telling you the result comes in late. That is not right. That is partly due to the overwork of the individuals involved, but we monitor that very carefully and we are on to it pretty quickly when it happens. But that is part of, to some extent, trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. Up to now, we have not had the members and the different types of members we needed to do the job as efficiently as we would like, but it is now at the point where it is pretty much fixed.

Q37            Ellie Reeves: In relation to the board staff, what has been the impact of the backlog on staff morale?

Martin Jones: It has certainly been a real issue for us over that time period. Most of the staff at the Parole Board are very junior members of staff. They work extremely hard, but the caseload has been extremely high. At points over the last two years, some of my staff have had 120 cases to manage, and hundreds and hundreds of emails flying through. It is very hard to keep on top of that. It is a constant challenge to ensure that you have enough members to do that.

The secret for me has been, first of all, to tell the wider picture in relation to the important work that we are doing, but also to look at how to develop those staff. We have been trying to change some of our structures, and make some more interesting jobs for those staff in enhanced case management and dealing with some of the more complex cases. We also ensure that our staff go out and watch hearings. If you just sit behind a desk working on a computer, it does not necessarily bring it to life in quite the same way as going to Pentonville and watching the hearing for which you have been the case manager. That absolutely helps staff get a perspective on things.

Professor Hardwick: Martin manages the staff but I see them work. They do a fantastic job. You can see that they are really working hard and well. Some of them are here now, and I congratulate them in this forum.

Q38            Alex Chalk: Delays lead to litigation; litigation leads to compensation; and compensation leads to money coming out of your budget. I think something like 5% of the total expenditure was absorbed last year in compensation claims. That is a significant proportion. How do you see that proportion changing over the next year to two years?

Martin Jones: For this year, I expect the total amount paid in damages to prisoners actually to go up because we are making such progress on the backlog. The problem we have is that the point at which you claim for your damages is when your case is concluded. As we conclude those really old cases, people come forward to say, “Actually, my case was delayed by three to six months,” and claim the appropriate amount of money. I am expecting this year to pay probably about £1 million in damages. That is a huge amount of money, and an enormous concern. I expect it to come down quite sharply next year because we will be back down to a much more steady state.

Q39            Alex Chalk: In the grand scheme of things, £1 million might not sound like a huge sum, but as a proportion of the expenditure it is really quite significant. I think your budget is about £20 million or so. Do you see that liability as a threat to your ability to discharge your responsibilities, or can you absorb it?

Martin Jones: This year we can certainly absorb it. Next year, I am hoping that, as we bring the number down, we will have the money to reinvest in what we should be doing, which is providing an efficient and effective parole system.

Professor Hardwick: Quite apart from the financial aspects, spending money on compensation is something the public are rightly very concerned about. It is not necessarily in the interests of the individual prisoner to get a wodge of money when they leave in an unplanned kind of way. That is not the best way to manage it. It does not really work for anyone, but there is a requirement set by the courts and we get on with it.

Q40            Victoria Prentis: Are those compensation payments managed internally or do you use external solicitors?

Martin Jones: Damages claims are all managed internally by our case managers and our small legal team. Obviously when we defend claims in the courts, we go to GLD to defend those claims.

Q41            Victoria Prentis: Does it take up a significant part of case managers’ time and energies?

Martin Jones: Yes. We have three or four members of staff working in that team to ensure that those cases are dealt with appropriately. They are obviously closely scrutinised as well, because we want to ensure that we pay the right amount of money.

Q42            Victoria Prentis: Do the prisoners use firms of solicitors, and are they always the same ones?

Martin Jones: There is a different proportion. Some of them use the same solicitor that they had representing them in the hearing and they continue that, but it is not a complicated process. They can come to us and say, “I know my parole hearing was delayed and I have the dates and the decision letters.” They can come to the Parole Board themselves and we deal with it in the same way. We do the same assessment.

Q43            Victoria Prentis: That was going to be my next question. Is there anything we can do to simplify the claiming system, so that solicitors do not need to be involved?

Martin Jones: I certainly think there is a case for better guidance. In the last few years, we have tried to put better guidance out for prisoners in relation to the parole process and how it works. I would be very happy to take away a point in relation to simplifying what you need to do at the end of the process.

Q44            Victoria Prentis: Have you done any estimate of the costs and what proportion of the £1 million is going on legal fees?

Martin Jones: Interestingly, we do not pay costs on those claims. We pay the money as damages claims. On the question of how much of it goes to the solicitor, we are not aware of that.

Q45            Victoria Prentis: Fine, but it is still happening.

Martin Jones: It is still happening, yes. Absolutely.

Q46            Chair: That is a fee agreement between the claimant and their solicitor.

Martin Jones: Yes.

Professor Hardwick: The system is not that complicated. I do not think there is huge scope for simplifying it.

Victoria Prentis: It is pretty tight.

Professor Hardwick: Maybe it relates to a slightly wider issue. One of the priorities for the future is to try to make the whole system more transparent and explicable. If you are a party in the case, how the whole thing works is pretty obscure, let alone for the general public. Certainly, one of the priorities for us going forward will be to try to open the system up and explain it more, both for participants and the wider public.

Q47            Victoria Prentis: I remain concerned about the general public not knowing that you are paying prisoners—a small amount admittedly, but an amount—for time that they are quite properly spending in prison.

Professor Hardwick: Well, the argument would be that they are not properly in prison. They are there because of an administrative delay rather than a sentence of the court, to be fair.

Q48            Mrs Badenoch: Professor Hardwick, you mentioned a duty to victims in your opening statement. Victim attendance at oral hearings has been quite low. I think the number in the first six months of 2015 was 63. What more can you do to ensure that victims have more of a role in the hearings process?

Professor Hardwick: Martin and I regularly meet victim groups and the victims commissioner. That is very high on our agenda. There are lots of very good reasons why a victim may not want to attend a hearing. I would not want to pressurise them into doing it. For those who attend, we need to make the system as easy as possible. Going into a prison, if you have not been there before, is intimidating for anybody, let alone somebody who has been the victim of a serious crime. The whole experience, when we have talked to people who have been through it, often reopens all the trauma of the original offence. It is important that they are well looked after in the process, and that as far as possible they avoid the grumpy person on reception, and so on. All of that matters. We help them where we can with travel and expense costs.

The other thing I would pay tribute to Martin for is that, every time a victim attends, Martin sends them a personal handwritten note to thank them for their attendance and to say that it made a difference. We know from the feedback we get that that really matters to people. We try to do what we can to ease the process for people. We recognise that it is difficult for them.

Q49            Mrs Badenoch: Is there anything that you think can be done on top of that, or that you would like to do but you are not yet doing or perhaps for which you would need more resources?

Professor Hardwick: We scrabble to find a bit of money out of our budget to pay their expenses. It would not be a lot of money for the system to have a clear budget available, so that if people are attending a prison—if they are going to a high security prison it is likely to be a long way from where they live—their hotel and travel costs are met. Whether they can afford it should not be an anxiety people have about coming to a hearing. That ought to be absolutely clear from the start, and I would like to see that.

Martin Jones: The other thing I would suggest is in relation to the information provided to victims. The opportunity to do pre-recorded reading out of the statement would be a good idea. A number of victims produce a written victim personal statement which is submitted. I do not think that will be included in the figures you have. Some of them will simply say, “You have got it, but I could not face going to the prison,” and that is fine.

Q50            Alex Chalk: As you rightly made the point, Professor Hardwick, it can be an intimidating environment, as can courts. As we know, we bend over backwards to ensure that there are special measures, live links and all that kind of stuff. I get the sense that, although there are attempts and moves in that direction, it is the exception rather than the rule. What more can be done to ensure that we harness technology with live links—that work, by the way—to ensure that victims do not have to go through that traumatic experience and you do not have to pay the cost of getting them there.

Martin Jones: There is an opportunity to make much greater use of videolinks. We have done some really good work at the Parole Board to increase our end of the technology. We are in conversations with the Prison Service in relation to how they would improve their end of the system. At some prisons, the equipment does not quite work in the way we would want. Of course, it is primarily used for prison-to-court videolinks rather than for parole hearings. The other question for us, and I have spoken to some victims about this, is that sometimes they want to come to the prison to read it out, which is fine.

Professor Hardwick: Some of them want to come and look the prisoner in the eye and tell them what happened. I would not want to deny them that possibility.

Q51            Chair: And when they do, you want to facilitate it.

Professor Hardwick: Yes, exactly.

Q52            Mr Hanson: I want to look at IPP, Professor Hardwick. We still have just over 3,300 IPP prisoners as of June; 50% plus are over five years’ tariff and 15% are over eight years’ tariff. Historically, they have had to wait a bit longer to be listed and assessed. Do you think that is fair?

Professor Hardwick: The way the IPP sentences work is unjust, in my view, and is a problem that needs to be addressed. I do not think that the significant drivers to improve the system are within the Parole Board itself. As Martin said, we have about four IPP prisoners who are now more than 90 days overdue for their hearing. On the whole, we are getting IPP prisoners to their hearings on time. About 75% of IPP hearings result in either release or progression.

To be really clear about one point, there is a significant proportion of IPP prisoners, although not a majority, who in my view remain a serious risk and should not be released. That is the dilemma. It is not that you can simply get them all out. There are some people in there who are, and remain, dangerous. If you look at the figures, for instance, for an ordinary life sentence, when the IPP sentence was introduced, the number of people getting a life sentence reduced. Some of the IPPs would have had a life sentence, had the IPP sentence not been available. You need to do some kind of assessment, but, as with other prisoners, the critical issue now is what is happening to them while they are in prison and a report is being produced, and more importantly still what is available to them in their community.

You have people who are very dangerous. You have others who are pretty straightforward, and we are getting through those. Then you have this group in the middle who have complex problems and are probably not going to be ideal citizens. They need to be managed and supervised. They might have moderate mental health problems or a bit of an alcohol problem. How are they being managed? There often are not the resources to do that. As a consequence, the most significant issue in the IPP problem now is that more than 50% are being recalled. It is not necessarily because they have committed another offence but because they have broken their licence conditions. That is a real problem. We are letting them out, but they are getting recalled, often for relatively minor breaches of licence. That is the biggest part of the IPP problem now.

Q53            Mr Hanson: You have a plan in place to try to get it down to 1,500 by 2020. Is that realistic? Are you going to achieve it, and how?

Professor Hardwick: I am hopeful that we will get to our target. These are people who have yet to be released. Of course, by about that time, the numbers of IPP prisoners who are being recalled will be almost greater than the number who are waiting to be released for the first time. The Parole Board can do its part of the job. We can assess the people who come to us in a timely way, and we can make consistent decisions with a realistic view about risk. We can let out the people who are able to progress, or we can send them to open conditions. We can keep inside the people who remain dangerous. But that depends on there being the facilities in the community to manage them properly when they are out. It depends on probation having a view of risk consistent with ours. There is a mismatch.

Q54            Mr Hanson: I was going to ask about that. We have figures that say that the IPP population that has been recalled has grown by 22% to 760 in the past year. If you had to assess that for us, is that the probation services at the CRTs? Is it the fault of the Parole Board in the first place, on the assessment? Where does the fault lie?

Martin Jones: The indication from the figures is that, when we review, we have to review every single recalled case. In about 60% of those, we re-release. Indeed, we are now re-releasing some of those IPPs on the papers, which is a new power that was introduced late last year. So far we have released 42 IPPs. We have either released them or sent them to open conditions, on the papers. That is a positive move, but it is an indication that with some of those people there may have been concerns, perhaps because they had an episode of drinking alcohol that may have caused some concern in the community. Once you get them back inside, there is no significant long-term risk and we are re-releasing a significant proportion of those people.

Professor Hardwick: Just to be clear on the full craziness of this, we are progressing or releasing 75% of the prisoners who come before us. About 50% are getting recalled. When we review that 50%, we are then releasing about 60%. That is not an effectively working system. There is a real problem. In my view, certainly on recalls, the test for getting recalled is too low.

Q55            Mr Hanson: You made a public protection point earlier. Of those 760, how many would you regard as serious further offences?

Martin Jones: The serious reoffending rate remains a fraction of 1%, so it is a tiny number. Of course, when those people have committed serious offences, they will be charged with those offences accordingly. They may stop becoming an IPP and they may be serving a new sentence for that crime.

Q56            Mr Hanson: Professor Hardwick, you have made a number of suggestions to Ministers about long-term challenges, including the risk test, short tariffs, IPPs and executive action on release of IPPs. When Lord Thomas came here, he said that there should potentially be a mechanism for resentencing. Those are all political and ministerial decisions. My question to you is, have you raised them formally? Has the Minister responded? Is it going to happen on any of those fronts? I will ask the Minister the same questions later, but I would like your assessment.

Professor Hardwick: In the short time that I have been chair of the Parole Board, there have been three Secretaries of State. I have raised it with each of them. I hope you do not mind me saying this, but when I raised it with Michael Gove when he was Secretary of State, he agreed but then got sacked before he could implement it. It has been a rather frustrating process.

I want to be careful that I do not cross boundaries. We are a court. It is for the politicians to set the law. We put options up to them that would make progress, but some of what would have helped a year ago is going to be less effective now. Changing the risk test is still worth doing, particularly with the short tariff IPPs, but it will not have the impact that it would have done a year ago, because we have got through a lot of those guys anyhow.

The critical thing, and the biggest issue, is recall. That is the one that will have the most impact on numbers. If you can get the numbers down, that makes some kind of sentence conversion process more feasible. As the numbers come down, that sort of option becomes more credible. For the people still at risk, you could have a life sentence. There are ways of managing it, I think. It is very frustrating.

Chair: We need to speed along on this because the Minister is due to come. Does anyone have any short points?

Q57            Victoria Prentis: I have a very short point on licence conditions. Surely you have some control over those. Are you setting the right ones if 60% are then being re-released? Doesn’t some of the responsibility lie with you?

Professor Hardwick: That is an issue we need to look at. It is a bit of a vicious circle. Sometimes, probation and offender managers recommend licence conditions that they think the Parole Board will want to see. The Parole Board accepts those licence conditions because the offender manager has recommended them and then they will actually get out.

Q58            Victoria Prentis: But that is something you could go back and do today.

Professor Hardwick: We certainly can do that and it is something we have identified. I think that would make some difference, but you have to be careful. With some licence conditions, there may not be a criminal offence, but if you are a domestic violence case and you are caught hanging about your ex-partner’s house, you have not broken the law but that is a serious indication of your risk. If, on the other hand, your offences are not related to alcohol at all but you get drunk and you do not come back to your approved hostel, that may not be an indication of risk. You need to look at what the risk is of serious further offending and what the breach is telling you about that risk.

Q59            Ruth Cadbury: You have answered quite a lot of what is in my question, so this gives you the chance to say anything that you have not had the chance to say so far. What else do you need successfully to deliver the 2016-20 strategy, and what could derail it?

Professor Hardwick: We will deliver the 2016 strategy provided the resources remain in place and provided we get the policy decisions. It is about the policy and political decisions that are made, particularly around IPPs and the remit of the Parole Board. They are the key issues. Of course, there are areas where the Parole Board itself needs to improve, and Ms Prentis indicated one of them. Largely, it is things outside us that need to change rather than the Parole Board.

Martin Jones: On the IPP numbers, I get a weekly report on how many IPPs were released, because we are very interested in the progress. It is important to say that this year we have released more than 500 IPPs, which is a really good indication of the direction of travel. We would be confident of releasing about 1,000 IPPs during the course of this year, and that includes the re-release of recalled IPPs, which is part of the overall picture.

Chair: That is very helpful, gentlemen. We thank both of you for your evidence. If there are any additional matters, perhaps we will drop a note to follow them up. We have the Minister coming very shortly, and I am sure we will raise a number of policy issues on like topics with him. I thank you for your attendance and for your evidence, and ask you to convey our thanks to your members and staff for what is clearly work that is going in the right direction. There should be congratulations where they are due. Thank you very much.

Professor Hardwick: Thank you very much. I will certainly do that, Chair.

Chair: Thank you very much.

Examination of witness

Witness: Sam Gyimah MP.

Q60            Chair: Minister, thank you very much for coming to see us. This is the first time you have given evidence to us in this Parliament, although not the first time since you have been in office in the past.

What are the key things that the Ministry is doing, and could do more about, to support an effective parole system? What do you judge are the key things?

Sam Gyimah: Thank you, Chair. It is good to be here to discuss the Parole Board. The first thing to say is that Nick Hardwick and Martin Jones have been doing a very good job. The Parole Board is coming up to its 50th anniversary and it is doing a good job, specifically in terms of protecting the public.

In terms of the key things that the Ministry can do to support the Parole Board, the issue to do with the backlog has been well rehearsed. The number of cases that needed hearing was 3,163 in January 2015. It was 1,298 as at September this year. There are far fewer prisoners having hearings delayed. The two significant things that the Ministry has done to support the Parole Board in that particular respect are around additional funding, which has helped to create a new operating model. That, together with the appointment of 100 new Parole Board members—over a third of the normal complement—has enabled them to hear more cases each month, and more than ever before.

Q61            Chair: It is to your credit that that has happened on your and the previous Secretary of State’s watch. In retrospect, perhaps it should have been done before, shouldn’t it?

Sam Gyimah: As the Committee is well aware, the Osborn judgment created a very different backdrop for the Parole Board. They needed to respond to that new challenge. We could have done it sooner but, as I said, we are recruiting 100 new Parole Board members. That is about a third of the complement. There were about 1,000 applicants, so it was quite a challenging job to get through.

Q62            Chair: I understand that the decision predates your time in the Department. Were you ever able to find out what drove it? Do you know if it was a budgetary consideration?

Sam Gyimah: No one anticipated that the court would hand down a judgment that meant that so many more offenders could request an oral hearing. I hope that is the only shock we are going to get to the system.

Q63            Victoria Prentis: The Osborn judgment did not come completely out of the blue. I accept that it was not on your watch, but do you feel that you now have more robust mechanisms in place and a better ability to speak to those who run the Parole Board, so that you can plan workstreams coming forward?

Sam Gyimah: Yes. At both operational and ministerial level, we have a good relationship with Nick Hardwick, Martin Jones and their team. We are working very closely on IPP progression and how we do that—we might come to that later on—and, more widely, in terms of the Parole Board and how it is structured and responds to challenges. The first thing, from my perspective as a Minister, is that they get the resources they need to do their job. Secondly, as we think about wider justice policy, although the Parole Board is independent, we must consider the impact on their ability to do their job, which is to protect the public.

Q64            Chair: Given that you have competing priorities, as any Department has, how do you decide how much money to give the Parole Board each year? You say you have recruited. Is this a discussion you have with the Parole Board? Is it part of the bidding system within the Department? What priority do you give the Parole Board?

Sam Gyimah: The process is that the Parole Board makes a budgetary submission each autumn for the following financial year. Officials then consider that and the Department comes to a judgment. Following the Osborn judgment, we provided £1 million of additional funding to enable the board to develop a new operating model. In 2017-18, we provided £2 million of additional funding to enable the board to induct and train the new members. In 2013-14, their budget was £11.4 million, and now it is £16.8 million. As far as I am aware, we have responded to all their financial needs on request, obviously ensuring that we get value for money and efficiency. That remains paramount in terms of how the Parole Board operates.

Q65            Chair: Out of that budget of about £16 million, nearly £1 million— £938,000—is going on compensation, which is wasted money in a sense. Much of that comes from failures elsewhere in the system, either in the Prison Service or the probation service, but still answerable to your Department. Would you agree that it is a waste of money, and what is the Department doing to lean on those other agencies to make sure that we are not getting needless delays that cause the board to pay compensation out of its annual revenue, in effect?

Sam Gyimah: I would use a different form of words, which is that the £938,000 is far too high. Last year was one of the highest, as you will have seen from the annual report, compared with £144,000 in 2015 and £554,000 in 2015-16, so it is too high.

Q66            Chair: How are we getting it down?

Sam Gyimah: The way to get it down is to make sure that prisoners are entitled to a fair and timely hearing, in view of the fact that the court allocates them compensation if they do not get it. It means making sure that the Parole Board and the Department are working as speedily and efficiently as possible in dealing with cases. That is ultimately the way to get that sum, which is too high, down.

Q67            Chair: The evidence we have had is that sometimes this is a problem because the national Prison and Probation Service does not have the reports available, or the regime within prisons means that the external agencies cannot get in there to write those reports. Is that something you are raising with the director of the national Prison and Probation Service?

Sam Gyimah: For the system to work, both HMPPS, and specifically the National Probation Service, have to do their job, and the Parole Board has to be able to do its job quickly. You touched on the Osborn judgment and the impact it has had on the Parole Board, but within the Prison Service there is also the issue of getting prisoners ready for hearings, whether it is courses or sufficient programmes, and doing that as quickly as possible. We have new action plans in place that are bearing fruit, but there is a lot more that needs to be done.

Q68            Ruth Cadbury: Is there a timescale for when action plans on appropriate courses will be in place, to ensure that prisoners are more likely to be ready for their Parole Board hearing?

Sam Gyimah: Yes. There is an IPP action plan, which has been in place since September 2016. We also have a progression regime at HMP Warren Hill that is making a huge difference. Prisoners are currently achieving a release rate at parole of 73% as a result of that. We plan to expand that to three more prisons.

The key worker model that we are introducing in all prisons, as we increase prison officer recruitment numbers, should also enhance their levels of engagement with prisoners to help with this. We also have psychology case reviews that deliver detailed analysis on IPP prisoners. There is no single way of dealing with this, but what I can say is that there are relevant programmes. The psychology review, for example, has had 1,100 cases, and we are already seeing signs of progress. The programmes and action plans are in place and are beginning to deliver results.

Q69            Ruth Cadbury: Our questions about delays in the system were about all prisoners and not just IPP prisoners.

Sam Gyimah: Yes; they apply to all prisoners, where relevant. There are some programmes that are a lot more challenging. For example, there is the healthy sex programme, which is a very intense programme for sex offenders who experience deviant fantasies. That is a low-volume, high-need intervention. It is more difficult to get on that one than other programmes, but we have brought the management of it in-house, to allocate things more efficiently.

Q70            John Howell: I want to raise a question from the last discussion. We had a discussion with Nick Hardwick about the extent to which he has to rely on other organisations in the justice system to be able to do his job and improve his performance. I wondered to what extent the changes that you are making in the Prison and Probation Service are actually helping that or hindering it.

Sam Gyimah: The changes we are making.

Q71            John Howell: Across the Prison and Probation Service.

Sam Gyimah: The changes we are making are to help deliver one of our most important tasks, which is public protection, so it should help overall. Specifically, in terms of the Parole Board and where they sit, they work with the National Probation Service. As Mr Neill pointed out, it is critical that they collaborate and work well together. From where I sit, we have a collaborative working relationship. All the action plans have been developed jointly and we are working very closely with them. I do not see why there should be unnecessary friction, which I think is what you alluded to, Mr Howell.

Q72            John Howell: But it does mean that an organisation like the Parole Board has to form new relationships with other organisations in the justice system to be able to reduce its backlog.

Sam Gyimah: To reduce the backlog, the key thing is to have the money and the members to deal with the hearings, and resource has been provided to achieve that. If you are talking about the whole justice system, in previous meetings, the Committee has stressed the need for rehabilitation in our prisons, as well as, obviously, prisoners serving their sentence, which is the punishment. There is no way we could deliver that in any meaningful way without a restructure of how NOMS—now HMPPS—operates. Where that has a knock-on effect on other arm’s length bodies like the Parole Board, it is the Ministry’s job to make sure that it is ironed out and dealt with appropriately.

Q73            Mr Hanson: We have figures showing that the number of IPPs is still around 3,300. Of those, 51% are five years or more over tariff and 15% are eight years or more over tariff. What steps are you taking as a Department to support the Parole Board in assessing those individuals speedily and effectively?

Sam Gyimah: I have already alluded to some of this. The IPP action plan is in force. The progression regime is underpinned by increasing staffing levels. We are doing psychology reviews. There is also the central IPP progression unit, which was set up in late 2016 and is focused on ensuring that cases are ready for the board to hear as soon as listing slots are available. As the backlog is reduced, the additional resource has been used to take a more proactive approach to case management. That supports progression, particularly for IPP offenders. It means, for example, looking at cases prior to the start of a parole review to anticipate what evidence the Parole Board will require.

Another aspect of the work is to take the most complex cases, such as offenders with social care needs, and work intensively with partners to put robust release packages in place and protect the public in the process. There is a lot going on to make sure that the Parole Board can do its job of assessing those individuals.

Q74            Mr Hanson: This may be parochial or it may not; I do not know, but I would welcome your view. Some IPP prisoners claim that courses that will help them show that they are now safe to be released are not available. Is that true? If so, how many courses and what are you doing about that? Not half an hour ago, we had Professor Hardwick, on behalf of the Parole Board, clearly say that there were not sufficient psychologists; they were lacking in numbers; and they were not available to help deal with those assessments in the first place. What would you say to Professor Hardwick, and what have you said about that particular issue?

Sam Gyimah: As I said, in terms of the psychology reviews, 1,100 have been carried out from this cohort. Out of that, 102 individuals were released. This is a huge and challenging task, as you know, Mr Hanson, from having been on my side of the fence. We have to deal not just with IPP prisoners but other prisoners with demands in this respect.

The other part of your question related to sufficient places on courses. What is worth saying up front is that the completion of a course is not a silver bullet. Most prisoners, even if they complete a course, will require further work. We work in such a way that, where there is a need for a course, they get a place on that course, except for the healthy sex programme where, because of its intensity, there is still a backlog.

Q75            Mr Hanson: It is not a silver bullet, Minister, but if you need the course to be able to get agreement to potentially go in front of the Parole Board, it is quite silver for that individual. Are there individuals now in the system who cannot access courses that are the predeterminant to them going before the Parole Board?

Sam Gyimah: If there are, I am not aware of it. What I am aware of is that we commission sufficient places on courses to make sure that everyone who needs it gets a place on a course.

Q76            Mr Hanson: Can you tell us how many psychologists are in the Department dealing with the issues that Professor Hardwick related, either now or at a future moment?

Sam Gyimah: I would have to write to you about the number of psychologists.

Q77            Mr Hanson: Has Professor Hardwick raised with you the number of psychologists and the potential impact of their lack of numbers?

Sam Gyimah: He has never raised that explicitly with me, no.

Q78            Mr Hanson: He hasn’t.

Sam Gyimah: No, not explicitly.

Q79            Mr Hanson: One of the issues that came out of the previous discussion was the question of recalls. I noticed a parliamentary question you had answered on 12 September—WPQ 9379—when you said: “This work is continuing to achieve results, with 576 IPP releases in 2016; the highest number of annual releases since the sentence became available in 2005.” We have just had Professor Hardwick say very clearly to us that recall was a problem. If we are releasing 566, but the figure we have had is a 760 recall and a growth in the population of 22%, is that a problem? If so, what is the solution to that aspect?

Sam Gyimah: There are two aspects to address on recall. The first is obviously that for IPP prisoners the recall period is a lifetime; over the course of a long period of time, there are reasons why they could be recalled. There is a second thing—the grounds on which an IPP prisoner could be recalled. There is a perception that, if an IPP prisoner misses a meeting with a probation officer because he is hiding under his mother’s bed or something, he gets recalled to prison. That is not the case. For them to be recalled to prison, the nature of the breach would have directly to relate to what makes them risky and to their original offending.

We cannot get away from the fact that, for all the difficulties around the IPP sentence that we can reflect on now, it is still a lawful sentence and these people are incredibly risky. For public protection reasons, if there is a breach of the licence, the Prison Service has to respond and they have to be recalled to custody. When they are recalled to custody, they do not go to the back of the queue. They can get their case reviewed in two to four months, and on the papers, rather than having to wait for another oral hearing. I think that strikes the right balance between protecting the public and being fair to the prisoners.

Q80            Mr Hanson: Professor Hardwick mentioned today, as well as prior to today, a number of political legislative policy changes that the Government could potentially consider with regard to IPPs. They include revising the risk test, short tariff IPPs and looking at executive action on releasing IPP prisoners. We also had Lord Thomas, in evidence to us on 14 September, saying that we could even re-sentence IPP prisoners. Are any, or all, of those options attractive? Are you considering them? Are you intending to bring any of them forward?

Sam Gyimah: We keep all options under review. I am aware of all the comments that you point to. You mentioned Lord Thomas, and Nick Hardwick has made his comments directly to me.

What I would say is that the system is working. We have focused on making sure that they get their parole hearings and that they are released if they are not a risk to the public. We are releasing IPPs in increasing numbers, and making it clear that there is progression and there can be hope.

There are also many IPP prisoners who may never be safe to release. This cohort includes many dangerous individuals taking active decisions sometimes not to engage in rehabilitation, and those who believe that their dangerous offending and behaviour is entirely appropriate. I have come across paedophiles who feel that society is wrong in not accepting their sexual preferences, and that they are right to have sex with children. Yes, we need to progress them, but we have to accept that there are some people who, were they sentenced differently, would probably be in prison for life.

Q81            Mr Hanson: The point, therefore, Minister, is that, for example, on Lord Thomas’s suggestion that we have re-sentencing, it may well be the case that an individual could be sentenced to a life sentence. That would mean relative certainty for the individual and the Prison Service about their time in prison. When you say that you have considered it and that you keep all options under review, are those option reviews ever going to lead to a policy outcome that assists with prison planning and definitive sentencing?

Sam Gyimah: I am focusing on making sure that the Parole Board can do a proper evaluation of whether those people are right to be released. That is where our efforts should be going at the moment, rather than necessarily on new legislation. It would be irresponsible to release people from custody.

Q82            Mr Hanson: Of the 3,353 people in June 2017, do you have any assessment of how many you feel are not ready for release at any point in time? That is a prison population management issue as much as anything else for those individuals, surely.

Sam Gyimah: I cannot give you a figure on that. I can go through with you some of the cases I have been looking at. I can give you another example. An IPP prisoner convicted of arson and firearms has been unable to apply any of the learning from the interventions so far completed. He minimises the severity of his long and troubling record of domestic abuse, blaming children. He is not engaging with professionals. Those are the real cases.

Q83            Mr Hanson: I am not arguing about the cases, Minister. I understand that there are people who have been given a sentence that is so serious that they will be released only when they are able to be secure for public protection. The question is, if we have 3,353 prisoners currently, of whom 15% are eight years or more over tariff, even if there is an assessment by the Department that those 15% are eight years over because they are in the category you mentioned, surely that assessment would be beneficial for every aspect of planning, from the prisoner to the rehabilitation company to the probation service and the Prison Service. If you are saying that all the options from Professor Hardwick and Lord Thomas are under review, at what stage do you determine that none of them is acceptable, or that some of them are? The situation with the portion of prisoners who have a potential life sentence, but do not know it yet, is not going to be resolved otherwise.

Sam Gyimah: You refer to how many years over tariff they are. This was a piece of legislation brought forward by the previous Labour Government—I don’t know if you were the Prisons Minister then.

Mr Hanson: I was not a Minister then. For the purposes of information, I was the Minister after the decision.

Q84            Chair: It is common ground that it did not work, and it has been replaced.

Sam Gyimah: Rather than looking at how many years over tariff someone is, the best judge is the Parole Board looking at the evidence and at public protection. That is where we can make progress now. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise. Yes, a lot of legislative options are proposed. Of course we should look at them, but, although we keep them under review, there are currently no plans to change anything.

Q85            Mr Hanson: I have one final point. The Howard League suggested that there is a post-release life sentence for IPP prisoners that could be replaced by a fixed two-year supervision period, with further extensions possible. For the purposes of completeness, is that something you have considered or reflected on?

Sam Gyimah: We would look at it. I do not think we are going to be able to do anything about that within the legislative timetable. The bigger issue for us here is the work we do—we being the National Probation Service—with IPP prisoners once they are released from custody, to make sure that they adhere to the terms of their licence and do not get recalled to prison. Of course, that is something we want to do. If someone goes through the whole rigmarole of getting released, we want to give them every chance to live a law-abiding life outside custody. The NPS are creating new arrangements outside the normal MAPPA arrangements. It is something we are looking at and working on, and it is the way forward.

Q86            Chair: I think we all agree that we have inherited a slightly messy scenario. You are quite right that there are some cases where public prevention will always require that people should remain in custody. Could I urge you to reflect on a fairly simple piece of legislation, as proposed by Lord Thomas, which would exactly remove the anomaly? Those who are a continuing danger would be given significant determinant sentences, and for the others the normal Parole Board process would carry out its normal risk-assessment process, rather than the slightly unsatisfactory historical hybrid that we have to operate at the moment. Isn’t it worth giving that a bit more consideration, rather than saying, “We are not thinking about it at the moment, but we will keep it under review”?

Sam Gyimah: Mr Neill, as you know, I take all new ideas and recommendations very seriously. We are roughly at 3,000. By working very hard over the next couple of years, we will probably get to a good position. Given the reality of the current parliamentary timetable, by the time you have legislation, get it passed in Parliament and then it becomes an Act that you can implement, you might as well have done the work anyway. That is why I am putting my focus and effort into enabling the Parole Board to do its job, but yes, it is definitely worth considering.

Q87            Victoria Prentis: Minister, we understand where you are coming from on the legislative timetable, but we would not want you to be under any illusion that the current system—while we commend the motives and hard work of the Parole Board—is working well. We have just heard evidence that 760 IPP prisoners have been recalled in the last year, 60% of whom were then re-released by the Parole Board. These are troubling figures and clearly show difficulties, both with the licence conditions that were set for the people who were released, and for the monitoring and recall systems that exist outside. Would you undertake to go away and look at the whole picture, holistically, of recalling IPPs with the Parole Board, and perhaps come back and tell us where you have got to?

Sam Gyimah: Absolutely. I think I alluded to this, but perhaps I should be a bit more explicit. The National Probation Service carries out a range of actions to improve the management of offenders on release, and to minimise the need to use their powers of recall. This includes developing alternatives to recall, such as readmission to approved premises where appropriate. What I can do is write to the Committee setting out the work around this fully.

Victoria Prentis: That would be very helpful. Thank you.

Q88            Ruth Cadbury: Following straight on from that, in looking at that work will you consider looking at the threshold for recall? That was specifically raised by Professor Hardwick. He felt that the threshold for recall was too low, and that fed many of the 60% re-release prisoners. Nobody wants a revolving door in and out of prison. It does not help somebody’s rehabilitation to go through that revolving door. What alternatives to that process are you thinking of for those who have breached a very low threshold for recall?

Sam Gyimah: Absolutely; I will look at that. I emphasise again that public protection has to be the key consideration.

Q89            Ruth Cadbury: Absolutely; but he was giving examples where there was not a big issue on public protection.

Sam Gyimah: I am happy to look at it.

Q90            Bambos Charalambous: There must be instances where people who were given life sentences are also up for parole. I just wondered if the people who were given a life sentence with a tariff, and who have secured parole, are breaching their conditions of licence in the same way as IPP prisoners. There must be some comparison of the two. If you got a life sentence some time ago, and you are up for parole because you have gone through your sentence, there must be a difference between why those people are not being recalled and the IPP prisoners are.

Sam Gyimah: The recall terms if you are an IPP prisoner are that if you are risky to the public you are going to get recalled, and that applies to any other offender who is on licence.

Q91            Bambos Charalambous: But if the sentence was a life sentence instead of the IPP sentence, which it might be in some circumstances, would a different regime apply to those prisoners?

Sam Gyimah: The difference with IPP prisoners is the length of time under which they are under licence, but they are all subject to the same MAPPA arrangements on release. If you are asking whether we have more IPP prisoners being recalled than other life sentence prisoners, I can certainly look at it. The offenders who got IPP sentences were particularly dangerous individuals and risky to the public. Some will get a licence for other reasons. We are dealing with a cohort of offenders where it is quite difficult.

Q92            Chair: I suppose the concern is that, while there are indeed some IPP prisoners—perhaps a significant number—who were and are a danger to the public, the way the system operated has meant that there are still historically some who are so far over the tariff for the nature of their offence that it is unlikely that the current system is doing justice to their case. Is there not a danger of hard cases making bad law, and that at the same time as we are keeping in those who should be kept in, perhaps we are not showing enough nuance in the system?

Sam Gyimah: The key thing is progression and hope, so that prisoners understand what they need to do to progress through the system; if they attend the courses and are clearly doing what they need to do to turn their lives around, there is hope that they can be released. Progression and hope are absolutely important, but the sentence is a lawful sentence.

I agree with the former Justice Secretary who said that it is a stain on the justice system but it is a lawful sentence. We have to make sure that in dealing with the offenders and going through the process we are fair to them, but that, at the same time, where they are risky we take appropriate action.

Q93            Chair: Professor Hardwick postulated various suggestions. He made it abundantly clear that it is not for him to do other than suggest, because these are political decisions for all of us at the end of the day. Perhaps you would agree that it is an unfortunate situation when we are saying, quite frankly, that it is a stain on the system but it is lawful. A lawful stain is still a stain, isn’t it?

Sam Gyimah: But we are putting in a lot of effort and resource to make sure that people are released. That is the right thing to do.

Chair: That is accepted.

Q94            Alex Chalk: I am accepting of course that you inherited this situation and you are doing your best to resolve it. I can understand that there are some people—Professor Hardwick made this point—who would probably have got a life sentence, but those numbers went down and as a result the IPPs were inflated. We get all that. The concern, however, is with people who had a fairly modest minimum term imposed, such as two years, so it would appear that they could never conceivably have been given life sentences.

It is difficult to be clear, but I am interested to know whether analysis has been done to work out what proportion are people who probably would have got a life sentence and what proportion are languishing and would never conceivably have got a life sentence. Has that sort of desktop study been done?

Sam Gyimah: There are studies, but once they have the sentence, the situation is the test to apply to release them. That is the reality of where we are. It is arguably an academic question to ask what they would have got otherwise.

Q95            Alex Chalk: While one makes the point about them being lawful, there is this issue, which causes a bit of moral discomfort at the very least, of people who have really quite modest terms of two or three years and are there for much longer. Whether it is lawful or not, there are a lot of us who feel very serious discomfort. I take the point that this is the process and it is lawful, and so on, but there is an ethical issue that lies at the heart of it. That is a comment more than a question.

Sam Gyimah: It is, and I am very aware of that. I speak to offenders when I visit prisons. I have spoken to people on the IPP sentence in prisons about the lack of hope that they feel. When I visited one prison after a disturbance, I saw graffiti on the wall saying, “Free IPPs”, so it is an issue for the prison system. Mr Hanson also rightly pointed out the issue about the prison population and planning.

It raises important issues of law and ethics, as Mr Chalk pointed out. As lawmakers we want legal remedies for these issues. There are practical remedies we could have, and that we are implementing, that can help to address that. They would also bring some fairness to the system.

Q96            Victoria Prentis: I have one further comment. The group that worries me in particular are the arsonists. They come with their own set of risk factors. If you are going to write to us, Minister, I would not mind having your thoughts on how we are going to deal with that particular rump that are going to be left over when the Parole Board has done its work—some of them will be.

Sam Gyimah: You mean the rump IPPs? It is a case of public protection. It is not advancing the argument in the way that you probably want me to deal with it, but as Prisons Minister that is how I have to look at it.

Victoria Prentis: We understand.

Q97            Chair: Thank you for agreeing to write on a number of other issues around that to update us. There will be some other things.

You make the point that there are pressures on the prison system and that is one of them, but there are others as well. They cross-reference each other. Pressures on the system sometimes create regimes that make it harder for people to go on the courses, for example. That is obviously something that I assume is a priority.

Sam Gyimah: What is a priority?

Q98            Chair: Dealing with the pressures on the system because of the numbers within and the fact that the restrictive regimes run in many establishments make it difficult for prisoners to go on courses and so on.

Sam Gyimah: Absolutely. We cannot say in one breath that we want people to turn their lives around and in another breath that we do not have the courses available, or a regime that allows them to go on those courses. I absolutely agree with you.

As we have discussed in the Committee before, there are a number of challenges that the prison system faces. They have been rehearsed a number of times. I still think that staffing is one of the key things that would help us address this situation, and that is where a lot of focus has gone over the last few months, with 868 net new staff in the last year. I expect that to continue. Every training space we have is booked up to the end of the year. We need to make sure that we have the staff on the landings and on the wings to help deliver this.

Q99            Mrs Badenoch: This is about numbers, basically. The prison population has increased significantly, and that is projected to continue. With the upstream changes that are taking place, what are you doing to assess and manage the impact on the Parole Board? I am thinking in particular of sentencing practice.

Sam Gyimah: That is a very good question about the knock-on effects of the historically high prison population on the work of the Parole Board. Nick Hardwick said that he has to deal with a lot of issues across the justice system. The Prison Service has to deal with a lot of issues across society. We have to take people who are sentenced by the courts, whether it is failures in pupil referral units or mental health or whatever. They all come to the Prison Service; we do not control any of that.

Specifically on sentencing, we have to make sure that the resources are available to Nick Hardwick to deal with the situation. We have learned a huge lesson from the Osborn judgment about the level of resources needed. That is how we will tackle that particular issue.

Q100       Mrs Badenoch: A couple of my colleagues mentioned recall cases. It does not appear that you were ready for the increase. Can you tell us a bit more about what you can do in terms of dealing with that? Why weren’t you anticipating it? It did not seem that there was a plan in place. What can you do about that?

Sam Gyimah: As I said, it is a long licence period so a lot can happen in that time. There are more things we can do and that we are doing. For example, there is more use of electronic monitoring to manage the recall situation. As I said, I will write to the Committee to set out the new innovations we are putting in place to manage offenders when they are released. I will put my hand up; I think that was lacking initially. The National Probation Service has addressed it, but it would be good to share exactly what we are doing with the Committee.

Q101       Mrs Badenoch: This is my final question. Looking at the Parole Board’s 2016-20 strategy, how well placed is it to cope with another shock to the workload like the Osborn ruling?

Sam Gyimah: That is a good question. The Osborn judgment was one of a kind. It said suddenly that we had to take most hearings orally rather than on the papers. I hope there will not be another judgment like that. We cannot predict it, but the lesson we have learned is that we need to respond quickly to the changing situation with resource for the Parole Board, and to work more closely with the Parole Board. I do not foresee a similar judgment to Osborn on the horizon, or in the pipeline, which could radically shape how the Parole Board does its job.

Mrs Badenoch: Let’s hope not. Thank you.

Q102       Chair: And you have to cope with a changing prison population, with more serious issues.

Sam Gyimah: Yes. More prisoners are in prison for sexual, violent and serious drug offences. That is mainly the profile of the increased population, which puts pressures on all parts of the system.

Q103       Chair: Ultimately, most people will be released and therefore the probation system is going to have to play a role in that.

Sam Gyimah: Yes.

Q104       Chair: There is one final thing from me. There are various legislative changes being talked about at the moment, perhaps for good public policy reasons, which could have the impact of increasing sentencing in some areas. When changes to sentencing policy, either by legislation or through the work of the Sentencing Council, are discussed, is there a systematic means across Government of doing a resource-impact assessment of what are likely to be the resource implications for the prison system?

Sam Gyimah: There is, and it is certainly always a major consideration for the Ministry of Justice.

Q105       Chair: How does it operate?

Sam Gyimah: The argument for longer sentences could come from a number of Government Departments other than the MOJ, which picks up the tab for prison places. I do not have responsibility for sentencing, but part of the spending review discussion with the Treasury is always sentencing and the likely impact on the prison population. Therefore, the MOJ’s budget always happens within the context of the spending review discussion.

Q106       Chair: Is there also an upstream discussion at the policy formulation level, saying, “If you go down this route it may be desirable, but be aware that it is going to have implications for people in prison, and therefore implications for the number of prison officers and the resources we need to put into a prison”?

Sam Gyimah: It is a consideration, but there is also consideration as to the impact on victims, and what victims want. As with everything in this place, the politics is as much a driver of these decisions as making law.

Q107       Chair: What I am trying to work out is whether the politics is informed.

Sam Gyimah: It is at Government level, yes.

Q108       Chair: In and around the process laid out within Government.

Sam Gyimah: Yes.

Q109       Chair: Minister, thank you very much for answering a range of questions. We are grateful to you. Thank you for your time and for your evidence; we are obliged to you. We will write to clarify the issues on which you have kindly undertaken to come back to us. They are very important issues.

Sam Gyimah: I will endeavour to reply as soon as I receive your letter.

Chair: I am sure you will. We are very grateful to you for your attendance today. It is always good to see you, Mr Gyimah. Thank you very much. The evidence session is concluded.