§ Mr. McFallI beg to move amendment No. 8, in page 18, line 26, at end insert—
'; and(d) requiring the Board to deal with cases within such time limits as the Secretary of State may prescribe.'.The Minister knows that we had a worthy debate on this issue in Committee. We are mindful of the fact that the Secretary of State may make rules for the proceedings of the parole board, but the amendment would permit those rules to include provisions regarding the time that the board may take to reach a decision. In the past, the board has sometimes taken too long to reach a decision. Paragraph 10 of the board's 1991 report says:the Board has expressed concern about the time required to complete the review of life sentence cases. The Board is 483 therefore very pleased to note that steps have been taken by the Department to reduce the time to around 10 months for the completion of reviews.I was grateful for that, but 10 months, which is quite reasonable, could become a year or two years. Therefore, we believe that for the procedure to be efficient it must be effective. There is need for a time limit on the board's decisions and it should be written into the Bill. I know that the Minister agreed with the spirit of the amendment that we moved in Committee and agreed to reconsider the matter. This amendment brings the issue before the House again for further ministerial thought.
§ Dr. GodmanAlthough I support the amendment, I shall ask the Minister a few questions which have been prompted by observations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall), who referred to the time taken to deal with cases.
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Has the Minister reached a decision about the board and its modus operandi since the Committee stage? Has he, for example, any proposals to increase the number of its members? When I can catch his ear, may I ask him whether there have been any fresh retirements from the board or appointments to it since we met in Committee? Have any existing members of the board been reappointed?
In view of the remarks made tonight by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton and the similar comments that he made in Committee, is additional assistance to be given to officials who serve the board by way of more advanced means of dealing with the vast amount of paperwork which passes through the board's hands?
§ Lord James Douglas-HamiltonI am sure that the necessary assistance will be given to officials, because I envisage that there will be more work, certainly for social workers, arising out of the Bill. I may be given further information, but I am not aware of any vacancies at the moment. The comments made in Committee by the hon. Member for Dumbarton will be borne in mind.
I am glad to be able to say that some helpful information has now been passed to me to the effect that my right hon. Friend has recently reappointed Mrs. Megan Casserly but decided not to reappoint Mr. Denis Rice. Sir Hugh Byatt and Mrs. Morris are demitting office this year. That is the up-to-date information, and I am glad that I was able to pass that on within a few moments of admitting that I was not aware of the most recent facts. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that.
§ Dr. GodmanI offer my compliments to the two members of the board who have recently retired, despite some less than helpful observations made about one of them by my hon. Friends. I believe that all the members of the parole board perform a valuable public duty, which should not be overlooked by hon. Members or by members of the public. I am delighted that Mrs. Megan Casserly, a distinguished social work manager, has been reappointed. Mr. Joe Scott is now chairman of the board. I said that he was a member of a large Lanarkshire mining family, but I believe that his family was involved in the steel industry in Lanarkshire.
§ Lord James Douglas-HamiltonHaving seen the parole board in operation, I am aware that it does an enormous amount of work and that its cases require a great deal of study and reading.
The amendment was buried under others in Committee, so I am glad that we have been able to give it a second hearing on its own because it gives me the opportunity to explain why it is unnecessary.
In Committee the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) said that it was difficult to understand whether clause 20(4)(b) and the amendment meant the same thing or had different meanings. It is a question of interpretation, but it is not necessary to require the parole board to complete its consideration of a case within a period specified simply by length. The important factor is not how long the board takes to consider a case but when it completes its consideration in relation to the date on which the prisoner first becomes eligible for parole.
If a determinant sentence prisoner is eligible for parole on, say, 1 April next year, all the necessary consideration and procedures must be completed so that the prisoner can be told before 1 April whether he is to be released on parole then, later or not at all. The review process begins about five months before what is known as the prisoner's parole eligibility date. The board sets deadlines for the submission of papers to enable it to meet the automatic deadline which is established in each case for the parole eligibility date.
The board usually requires that the cases of determinant sentence prisoners should be referred to it at least six weeks before the date on which the prisoner becomes eligible for parole. That gives the board sufficient time in which to make a recommendation and for a favourable recommendation to be considered by the Secretary of State and acted on if the prisoner is to be released on or shortly after the date on which he becomes eligible for parole.
The board is an extremely efficient body and, like the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), I pay tribute to the work of its participants. I am not aware of any criticism of its record in meeting the deadlines imposed on it in respect of determinant sentence prisoners.
Different considerations apply to life sentence prisoners. In such cases, there is no need to impose a specific time limit on the parole board, because that would not help to accelerate what is inevitably a fairly lengthy process. The board itself has previously criticised the time taken in other parts of that process—consultation with the judiciary and consideration by the Secretary of State—but strenuous efforts have been made in recent years to achieve a speedier throughput of cases, and sustained progress has been made. The maximum time for reference of life sentence cases to the parole board has been reduced to 10 months from the date of initiation of the review, and we aim to improve on that wherever possible.
In response to the hon. Member for Dumbarton, I must point out that the Bill already enables the Secretary of State to make rules requiring cases to be dealt with at prescribed times. Nothing more is required, and the amendment would not achieve any desirable result in that limits specified by length of time would not be helpful in this context. I hope that my explanation has made that clear, and that the amendment will not be pressed.
§ Mr. McFallI thank the Minister for his explanation. As he knows, the spirit of the amendment is to reduce the time taken for the reviews. I hope that the Minister will bear our comments in mind and that, in practice, the time will be reduced. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.