Prime Minister Andy Burnham pledges to end shocking, cruel & inhumane injustice of IPP scandal 👏

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced he will end the injustice of indefinite jail terms in this parliament. It's a major victory for victims of the scandal. If you're not yet familiar with one of the most cruel, inhumane and monumental injustices of the past half century, hold on to your seats. I consider these human rights violations, I consider these prison sentences have caused inhuman treatment, if not degrading treatment and if not psychological torture. These are very serious allegations I'm making and I don't make them lightly. It's a scandal that has been linked to almost 100 suicides in prison. This is state-sponsored torture because it's the state that locks people up far beyond their tariff. And it's not North Korea we're talking about. This is state-sponsored torture that has been taking place in this country and is happening right now. And prisoners have a right to go to the It's a scandal rightly described by former justice secretaries as a stain on our criminal justice system. And you would be hard-pressed to find a single parliamentarian to disagree. IPP imprisonment for public protection is as big a scandal as the post office and indeed the infected blood scandal. As bad as they are. Almost 100 prisoners have taken their own lives with this no hope never ending sentence. The only difference with IPP is not enough people know about it and that's got to change. Even Lord Blunkett, the former Labour Home Secretary who introduced the sentences, now regrets them. There are times in life when you put your hands up. I got my part of it wrong. IPPs, or imprisonment for public protection sentences, to give them their full title were designed to be given to serious offenders whose crimes didn't warrant a whole life sentence. The problem is IPPs were given out far more widely than initially anticipated. And in many cases they were given to people who had committed low-level crimes. Thomas White is one of the prisoners who even a former Home Secretary has described as a victim. Jailed for mobile phone theft 14 years ago, he remains in detention today. It's because he was imprisoned under a controversial now abolished type of sentence called an IPP, imprisonment for public protection. These sentences likely breach Article 3 of the Human Rights Act which protects people from torture and degrading treatment. Just think about that. IPP sentences were rightly abolished over a decade ago but not retrospectively. And you'll be staggered to know that almost 2,400 people were still languishing on these cruel and inhumane sentences in December 2025. The majority having served at least 10 years longer than their original minimum term. In any sensible world, spending 16 years in jail for stealing a flower pot seems ridiculous. Yet it has happened here under what are called imprisonment for public protection sentences. It's unthinkable isn't it? And just think about this. If they had committed their crime just a day after indeterminate sentences were abolished, they would have long been freed. You've punished these people beyond any reasonable person could have punished them. It's not right that we continue to perpetuate subjecting them to a punishment and preventive detention. To end this appalling injustice, the House of Commons Justice Select Committee has recommended a re-sentencing exercise take place overseen by a panel of experts for everyone still serving these sentences as the only way to address the unique injustice caused by the IPP sentence. But successive governments have shamelessly refused to engage with such an exercise. A lot of people in prison are now reaching the point of despair. The Prime Minister's decisive action to bring a total retrospective end to imprisonment for public protection sentences will finally see an end to one of the most cruel, inhumane and monumental injustices of the past half century. A scandal rightly described as a stain on our justice system. A scandal described by the rapporteur for torture as an egregious miscarriage of justice and psychological torture and one which likely breaches Article 3 of the Human Rights Act. I've applied common sense here and I was faced with a situation where people on those sentences who have more than served their time not being released when others who've committed very serious crimes being released early. This announcement will finally bring an end to decades of disproportionate punishment, institutional trauma and loss of hope. It's a day that thousands of families, parliamentarians, prison reform groups, legal advocates, charities and campaign groups have spent years fighting for. The government must now act on this as quickly as possible and ensure justice is finally done.