Working in partnership for IPP reform

The coalition, coordinated by the Prison Reform Trust, is pressing members of the House of Lords to support amendments to the Victims and Prisoners’ Bill, to achieve meaningful reform on the long-discredited sentence. The amendments are due to be debated by the House of Lords on Tuesday, 12 March, though this date may change.

Other members of the coalition include the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Psychological Society, Amnesty International, Justice, Liberty, the United Group for Reform of IPP, the Probation Institute, Inquest, and the Howard League for Penal Reform.

In 2022, the justice select committee called for a comprehensive approach to tackling the IPP scandal, chiefly through a resentencing exercise overseen by an independent panel. Last year, the government rejected this recommendation on the grounds of public protection and opposed an amendment by committee chair Sir Bob Neill, a widely respected Conservative MP, on IPP resentencing to the Victims and Prisoners Bill.

A similar amendment is being tabled by Baroness Fox in the House of Lords in a few weeks’ time. We have been working with Baroness Fox, as well as with Earl Attlee, grandson of Labour’s great post-war prime minister, Clement Attlee, on a further amendment aimed at allaying concerns about the capacity of the probation service to supervise released IPP prisoners. Our director, Richard Garside, has written this piece in the Morning Star, explaining our thinking and rationale.

Richard Garside, said:

All parties promise not to use IPPs – and prisons more generally – as a political football, but immediately seem to do exactly that. To wipe this stain off our criminal justice system for good, all sides are going to have to work together. Hopefully the Attlee amendment can help make that happen a bit sooner