Northern Ireland Agreement: Accelerated Release of Prisoners (Hansard, 18 May 1998)

§ Lord Dubs

Under the Belfast Agreement, the Government undertook to put in place mechanisms to provide for an accelerated programme for the release of prisoners, including transferred prisoners, convicted of scheduled offences in Northern Ireland or, in the case of those sentenced outside Northern Ireland, similar offences. Existing powers of release are inadequate to give effect to what is proposed to be done. Determinate sentence prisoners are normally released as a144WA consequence of remission. The maximum remission permitted under the Prison Rules is one half of sentence, whereas prisoners covered by the agreement are to be released when they have served one-third of their sentence. It would not be possible to amend the rules to increase the rate of remission partly because remission under the rules can only be based on a prisoner's good conduct in prison, a factor which will not be relevant to whether he is a qualifying prisoner for purposes of the agreement. Nor can rules on remission be made which make provision for qualifying prisoners which is different from that for other prisoners. It is also intended to apply licence conditions to determinate sentence prisoners released as a consequence of the agreement and, for their recall, arrangements which will satisfy the ECHR, and this would not at present be possible if the prisoners were released on remission, at which point their sentences expire. These arrangements will be applied to life sentence prisoners. For prisoners who are transferred from England and Wales or Scotland as restricted prisoners, the new provisions will mean that they can be released earlier than would otherwise be the case. Release of prisoners who satisfy the qualifying criteria would not be possible in exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to pardon or remit sentence because no licence or condition could be imposed and no recall would be possible, even if it would otherwise be proper to use this Prerogative power for any or all of these categories of prisoners.