Member

The Government then rightly moved to address the very serious failings identified by the Worboys case by allowing summaries of Parole Board decisions to be provided to victims and other interested parties and allowing a reconsideration mechanism, introduced in 2019. That allows a prisoner and/or the Secretary of State for Justice within 21 days to seek reconsideration of certain decisions taken by the board. Victims are now also permitted to seek a judicial review on the grounds that decisions were procedurally unfair or irrational. Most significantly, the Parole Board’s Rule 15 was amended by secondary legislation in 2022 to enable public hearings to be facilitated, upon request to the chair of the Parole Board, in the “interests of justice”—a test utilised previously by the mental health tribunal.