‘Don’t be on the wrong side of history’: Indefinite IPP jail terms compared to Post Office and Infected Blood scandals

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “History is being written right now, and my plea to government is this: don’t be on the wrong side of history,” Lord Woodley told the House of Lords during the second reading of a bill to resentence IPP prisoners, 90 of whom have already taken their own lives in jail. He told the Lords that inmates should work towards release through a refreshed IPP action plan, announced today, which campaigners have dismissed as “not worth the paper it’s written on”. She challenged: “So what is this government going to do, keep these people locked up arbitrarily and indefinitely, just like in Guantanamo?” Comparing the situation to other “horrendous injustices”, she added: “How many scandals have to be endured by the citizens of this country before a government finally says, no, we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the Post Office Horizon scandal, or Windrush, or infected blood, or Hillsborough, or Grenfell?” The indefinite jail terms, which saw offenders handed a minimum term but no maximum, were introduced by New Labour in 2005 in a bid to be tough on crime. Lord Woodley, who backs The Independent’s campaign for all IPP prisoners to have their sentences reviewed, said: “ is a positive step, but simply not good enough to address this industrial-scale miscarriage of justice.” Campaigner Richard Garside, of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said the recall figures show that the IPP sentence is reproducing like a virus, adding: “When you are faced with a virus, you need a vaccine, and the vaccine is resentencing.” open image in gallery Marc Conway was among bystanders who helped to disarm terrorist Usman Khan on London Bridge before Khan was shot by police Reformed IPP prisoner Marc Conway, who was one of the heroes of the Fishmongers’ Hall terror attack, said the action plan will never work in a prison system that is overcrowded, underfunded, and under-resourced.