The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Lemos) (Lab)

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for securing this important debate and all noble Lords who have contributed this afternoon to what has been a sober but very humane debate. N

I do agree with the noble Lord about the importance of hope, particularly for this group of prisoners. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to be in prison, serving more than 10 years over your

I do not have that information, but I will seek to get it and I will come back to the noble Lord and others about it. On the point of principle that he raises about the risks of reoffending, this rela

I can reassure the noble Lord that we do not intend to let this drift, but he will understand that I cannot give specific Dispatch Box commitments on dates. Frankly, that is a pessimistic view of how

That is precisely the reason why, as we think through how we will end this sentence, we are thinking about what support we need to put in place, both before and after their release. I refer to the wor

I agree with all that, except the last phrase about going back to the earlier position. We introduced the risk-assessed recall review because we wanted to put an end to the situation the noble Lord de