Chairman's Foreword

In my foreword to last year's Annual Report I highlighted two major challenges that faced us as an organisation, lack of judicial resource that was contributing to our rising backlog of cases and the uncertainty over our future status. I am pleased to say that we have made very significant progress in each of these areas over the last 12 months, but both remain unfinished business and further challenges undoubtedly lie ahead.

Judicial resource

The significant lack of judicial resource has been the single most important factor holding back the work of the Board over the last 12 months. The severe shortage of judge time available to us has crippled the ability of the Board to deal with the huge increase in the number of oral hearings needed to consider lifer and IPP prisoners.

This has led to a steadily increasing backlog of indeterminate cases and unacceptable delays for prisoners who are entitled to a timely review of whether they can safely be released back into the community.

Working closely with our colleagues in the Access to Justice Group of the Ministry of Justice, and the Senior Presiding Judge, we have over the last year taken a number of important steps towards easing the obstacles to our judicial recruitment process. The result has that we have been able to appoint 59 new judges to the Board in 2010 in addition to the 11 appointed in the normal 2009 recruitment round.

The first challenge for us over the next 12 months will be to train this unprecedented number of new judges, integrate them into our hard-working existing membership body, and put them to work to reduce our backlog of outstanding cases. The second challenge will be to find matching numbers of independent and particularly specialist members to sit on panels along with the judges and at the same time raise the capacity of our staff to administrate the additional workload.

Future of the Parole Board

The public consultation over the future arrangements for the Parole Board led by the Ministry of Justice took centre stage last year with a consultation paper setting out the options published in July. This long-overdue review of the functions and status of the Board followed the Court of Appeal judgment in the Brooke case that questioned the independence of the Parole Board.

The formal consultation period closed in November with a total of 75 responses having been received by the Ministry. Amongst these was the corporate response from the Parole Board, in which we called for the Board to remain an independent body with sponsorship being transferred from the Access to Justice Group of the Ministry of Justice to HM Courts Service.

However, the responses received by the Ministry established no clear consensus for the way forward. This conclusion left officials with the need to undertake more detailed work to understand the ideas raised and develop a better picture of the options available, with the intention of presenting findings to Ministers in the summer.

The options were simplified in March, with the announcement by the Secretary of State of his intention to bring together HM Courts Service and the Tribunals Service into a single organisation. At the same time he indicated that he would consider the opportunities that the new organisation offers to secure the Boards position in the justice system.

Whatever the eventual outcome of Ministerial deliberations, the next 12 months will inevitably be a period of significant change for the Board. My job will be to continue to safeguard the judicial independence of the Board and ensure that the Board is best placed to deliver timely rigorous and fair decisions.

The Rt Hon Sir David Latham
Chairman
30 June 2010

The Parole Board for England and Wales

Grenadier House, 99-105 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2DX

Telephone 0845 251 2220