PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Imprisonment for Public Protection Sentences - 15 September 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

Our Government will bring forward legislation to end the IPP sentence by the end of this Parliament. We will do so through cross-party engagement. We recognise that these are complex cases, involving important considerations to do with public protection and victims, and it will take us time to get this right. I anticipate making a further announcement later this year.

In the summer, I met a group of IPP prisoners, most of whom had been serving their sentences since 2006 or 2007. They told me about the extreme toll that the protracted uncertainty of the sentences takes on their mental health, and one showed me where he had been self-harming. The prisoners also spoke about the unfairness of this type of sentence, and particularly of seeing people who had committed much greater offences released much sooner than them. We must always do right by the victims of prisoners’ crimes, but these are men who have now served their original sentences several times over, so it is right that the Secretary of State is reviewing this type of sentence. What assessment has he made of the mental health impacts of these sentences, and when we can expect decisions on next steps?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her considered question. I have had similar conversations in my constituency surgeries, and I recognise the challenges that those prisoners face. In the immediate term, IPP prisoners have greater access to mental health support, including funding for specialist assessments by psychology services. She will know—I suspect that this is at the root of the conversations she had—that the Phoenix unit opened up at HMP Aylesbury last month to provide dedicated support for IPP prisoners. I know that those prisoners, their families and, indeed, their victims are looking to see what the Government will do next. We must get any changes that we make right, and ensure a balance with public safety, but these sentences have been discontinued for a very good reason. That is a long-standing cross-party position, and it is time that we move forward.

Earlier this month, John Dunne was convicted of trying to meet a 14-year-old boy at a train station in Suffolk. He received a two-year sentence, reduced from three after a guilty plea. This still seems lenient, considering that Mr Dunne has already served a life sentence for rape and murder. Our community and country will never be safe when we release people who are clearly not functioning in society. I have written to the Attorney General about this sentence, but if the Government are considering changes to IPP, what is their plan for keeping children safe in situations like this?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the question, and the spirit in which it was asked. I will not be drawn on that individual case if it is with the Attorney General, because it is right that that process carries on unhindered. The hon. Gentleman will know that there is a tension on this issue. I do not think that he or anybody in this House believes that people who have served their sentence—or, in many cases, a decade or more beyond their sentence—should be held in prison. That is why we have discontinued those sentences, but he makes very important points about support, public safety and public protection. We are doing work on that at the moment, and I look forward to his scrutiny of our plans.