Member

As the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, said, we have got to do something. We have a range of options. The first is reformulating the test for release, but we have looked at that and it went nowhere. The second is resentencing, and I shall come to that in a moment. The third is setting a release date for all. An expert committee I have chaired for the Howard League has put forward certain proposals, but we are not debating those so it would be wrong for me to use this as an occasion to go into them. The fourth is shortening the time for licence. This has been a singular achievement of the previous Government, and I pay tribute to the Lord Chancellor who had the guts to do this. It is right to remind people that politicians who have guts sometimes deserve a great deal of praise—and he had the guts to do so.