Imprisonment for Public Protection Prisoners

The IPP sentence is a stain on our justice system. I believe the best way to support IPP prisoners towards a safe and sustainable release is via the IPP action plan, well-run and well-resourced prisons, and a Probation Service that is thriving. The good news is that, according to the inspectorate, 75% of our prisons are achieving higher scores than in previous inspections, and 90% of our probation regions are too. That is the best way to expedite release.

I thank the Minister for his Answer. Does he agree that the fact that there are nearly 900 unreleased IPP prisoners still in custody, of whom 99% are over-tariff, is wholly unacceptable? How much will that shameful statistic be reduced in the next 12 months? What steps will be taken to reform the way the Parole Board and the currently laggard and dilatory post-release processes operate in these cases?

From March 2025 to March 2026, there was an 11% reduction in the number of never-released IPP prisoners, but I want to get more men and women out for the first time and post recall. We need to do more, and we are doing more. We are rolling out IPP advocates to 12 prisons where there is a large concentration of IPP prisoners so that they can wrap their arm around these people and help them get ready for parole. We are establishing the Phoenix wing in HMP Aylesbury in August, which will be a specialist wing for those furthest from release, and the Parole Board review time has already reduced from an average of 18 months for IPP prisoners to 14.5 months—I aim to get it to 12 months soon. I also believe in employment and second chances. Having employed many IPP prisoners in the past, this to me is the most positive route we can take, so that when they get out, they stay out.

My Lords, I commend my noble friend on the time and commitment he has given to talking to organisations on behalf of prisoners and their families. Does he agree, however, that there appears to be an increasing logjam of those on recall who are held in prison often when the original allegation that got them there has already been set aside?

I thank my noble friend for all his continued support in this difficult area and for sending me a lot of cases that I can look at. The good news is that recall is down by 31%. Under the risk-assessed recall review, which is a specialist review where we can quickly release someone quickly, we had released 50 prisoners early up to September 2025—in the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing the updated figures, and I hope for that figure to be higher. We also have the round table of the Peers’ IPP group on 20 July, which I am really looking forward to, because we can go into this in more detail then.

My Lords, can the Minister, whose personal commitment is not in doubt on this issue, tell us why the Government continue to reject a significant proportion of recommendations by the Parole Board for the transfer of IPP prisoners to open conditions? In answering that question, perhaps he will help me answer a mother who has written to me and whose son is an IPP prisoner. He was given a six-year sentence and has now served 18 years. She says: “He is 50 this year. I fear I will not see him liberated and free before I die”. She wants transfer to an open prison, because most of these prisoners are too traumatised and too mentally incapacitated to undertake the action plans.

I am a big fan of open prisons. That is where the best recruitment is and that is where people reintegrate into society a lot more. I was in HMP Birmingham three weeks ago, where I met an IPP prisoner who had been to open conditions for the first time and then had asked to come back because he did not feel ready, so it is a good way of testing people on their journey. I would like to do more, but this comes back to the point that we want our prisons to be working well and then they have the time to really support people on that transition. However, we have to protect the public and we have to make sure that people are ready.

My Lords, we know that the psychological harm caused by the IPP sentence adversely affects prisoners’ risk assessments. What are the Government doing to improve the mental health of IPP prisoners so as to improve their prospects of release?

It was important two years ago to get the IPP prisoners in the right prison so that they could get the support they needed. We have gone from the 70% range to now 95% of IPP prisoners being in the right prison, which means that they can get the right support. Again, it comes back to the question: do we have prisons that are working well and do we have the right support teams around those individuals? I am seeing that regularly. When I go around prisons, I am seeing things getting better, but we still need to do more. We also need to do more to support individuals who are neurodiverse IPP prisoners. The autistic wings that we are developing are a really positive step forward.

My Lords, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman pointed to IPPs as a contributory factor in prisoner suicides. Indeed, the Minister of Justice’s own figures declare that there have been 92 self-inflicted deaths over the last 20 years since the introduction of the sentence—I can cite figures that suggest there have now been 96. What are we doing to reduce distress and keep people safe in our prisons, so that they may one day have the prospect of being safely released rather than dying by their own hand while in the care of the state?

It is very important that we safely release people and that they are safe when they are in our care. That is especially so for IPP prisoners—as well as their families who are also trying to support them. Self-harm for both men and women is down in our prisons. The number of deaths up to March 2026 was also down, by 12%. Even so, these are people—and people who we need to help. We need to make sure that we have that wraparound support for them. They are often people who are unwell and, whether they are in secure hospital or not, they need our support.

My Lords, has thought been given to the support that families can give to these prisoners? Their support can be important, particularly on release, in minimising the risk of their having to be recalled because they have broken the rules.

The noble and learned Lord is exactly right: families play a huge role—it is employment, it is housing and it is families. One important thing about open prisons, for example, is that prisoners can go out on day release and reintegrate. Some 193,000 children are affected by parental imprisonment, so we need to make sure that we help both the prisoner and their family on that journey.

My Lords, there appear to have been 3,000 IPP prisoners in 2024, 2,500 in 2025 and still close to 2,500 in 2026, with the never-released group dropping from 1,200 to around 950 in the same timeframe. In his response to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, the Minister said that there had been an 11% reduction in the never-released group from 2025 to 2026. Is 11% also a firm commitment for the next 12 months, or will the department commit to even more?

Noble Lords who know me will know that I do not lack ambition. Although I cannot put any figures on it, I can say that we are doing all that we can. I work with incredibly professional and dedicated teams within the Ministry of Justice. Whenever I go round a prison, I always meet an IPP prisoner; I sit in their cell and talk to them about where they are up to. I sense their hope as well as that of the staff who work with them, because it is very much a team effort.

My Lords, the House understands the need to balance risk to the public from release against the injustice to IPP prisoners of their continued detention long after they have served their tariffs. Granted that we are making progress, does the Minister think that we yet have the balance right—even now, 13 years after the IPP sentence was abolished—when, every day, we release prisoners who have served determinate sentences and now need to do so to relieve pressure on space without the need for determination that their release is risk-free?

Release is never risk-free, but we need to balance the opportunity and the risk. I am seeing a much more stable Prison and Probation Service. By that, I mean that we have the right number of people in the right places with the right resources. I have been going round the country doing probation roadshows, talking to probation staff up and down the country about what our plan is to get through to next April, when we will have supply matching demand. Even though the focus of many of these conversations is on prisons, if we do not sort out and support probation—that is where the heavy lifting in the justice system is done—we will never make the progress that we all want to achieve.

The Minister says that he is ambitious, which I am pleased to hear, but where in government is work to prevent people ending up in prison? I cannot see it. I cannot see homelessness prevention, prison prevention or the exportation of poverty from people’s lives—90% of people in prison are there from poverty.

I thank the noble Lord for that question and for the work that he does. Some 80% of offending is reoffending, so something is going wrong when so many people just go round in a cycle. One of the main reasons is related to housing. We have far too many people leaving prison with nowhere to live, so I have managed to get agreement across government to halve the number of people leaving prison with nowhere to live by the end of this Parliament. That is one important step in making sure that, when people get out, we help them to stay out.