Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-05-20
Topic: Law and Crime
David John Maclean (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend for his response and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed. I shall try to comment briefly on all the points raised. I cannot say that I am disappointed with my noble and learned friend’s reply, since I had no expectation that our Ministry of Justice would countenance the radical proposal that some convicts not deserving of leniency should stay locked up Consideration for early release is not a fundamental right; it should be earned by a whole range of factors. Some of these may be subjective and judgmental, such as reports on the convict’s behaviour in prison, his attempts at learning a skill or trade, anger management and so on. Others, I believe, should be a simple statutory bar that removes any discretion from the Parole Board. One would be that a convict who admits that he killed a person but refuses to admit that it was wrong should not be considered for release until he is willing to make that admission. The other case, in my opinion, is the one before us today: no one should be considered for release if he has not given details of how and where he disposed of the bodies of his victims, with the exception for the minority who have genuine memory loss My noble and learned friend said that if a prisoner lies about the location of the body and it turns out to be false, he forfeits his right to consideration for early release. I am not suggesting that we take the prisoner at his word; we would not be so naive as to say, "Okay, you’ll get early release; you’ve told us where the body is", and then a few weeks later discover that he has lied about it—of course not. Nor do I accept that a bar on early release would necessarily be in contravention of Article 5 of the treaty. My noble and learned friend said that it could—I think these were his words—"potentially put us in that territory". That is far from certain I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who spoke with considerable authority on this matter. If my arguments are not convincing, I hope that the House will in due course listen to him. I was also moved by what the noble Lord, Lord Mann, said. He, too, had experience of the pain of the families of the Moors murder victims, who were deprived of closure because the killers kept that power. He stressed the word "power", which is a very good term. If a prisoner can still be eligible for parole and not divulge information about the bodies, he retains that power over the relatives, the victims and the Parole Board I am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier for his kind and typically overgenerous comments and, as usual, his very thoughtful and learned contribution. I hope that the Government will explore his idea of a proper court hearing to decide on disclosure, despite what my noble and learned friends the Advocate-General and Lord Mackay of Clashfern said. I take the point that my two doctors suggestion is another attempt to get some certainty when a prisoner may not be able to recall. I accept that getting certainty may be difficult for a wide variety of reasons, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern highlighted. However, I hope that he would agree with me that, where a prisoner considered to have memory recall simply refuses to divulge information, parole should not be considered in any circumstance. That is a quite different matter from a prisoner who is unable to recall, however that is determined.