Parole Board may be forced to explain its decision on release

THE Parole Board could be forced to explain its decision to release rapist John Worboys as the chairman admitted yesterday that his organisation is not transparent enough.

It came as Bob Neill, head of the Justice select committee, announced Prof Nick Hardwick will be called before MPS to answer questions about the decision amid claims victims were not told about Worboys release.

Mr Neill, also a barrister, said the formal decision should be made public despite rules which prevent the Parole Board from doing so as he warned releasing Worboys after an eight-year jail term was “very disturbing”.

In a statement he said: “It is ridiculous that the current rules prevent the board making public the reasons for their decisions.

Prof Hardwick has called for MPS to back ‘opening the process up’ and we will give him the opportunity to make precisely that case”

Other MPS backed the call last night as it emerged that the Ministry of Justice has the power to allow the Parole Board to release the details of the Worboys case if it chooses to do so.

Dame Vera Baird QC, the former solicitor general, said the decision should be reviewed.

She said: “Somebody with a sufficiently close interest … should look into the possibility of judicial review of this decision by the Parole Board”.

Prof Hardwick admitted yesterday that decisions to release prisoners is “not an exact science”.

In a keynote speech in November last year he said: “Over the years successive legislation has extended [the Parole Board’s] remit to a wide variety of cases – to the extent that I am not sure that we are the right people to make the decision in all the cases that come before us”.

He added that “our decisions are now solely based on risk”, but warned: “The early reports of the Parole Board appear to take a wider view of public protection and justice than we do today and we lose something if our decisions simply turn on risk algorithms and the statistical analysis of the effectiveness of behaviour programmes and avoid moral and ethical judgment.”

Responding to calls for the decision to be published, Prof Hardwick admitted that there is a “lack of transparency” and revealed a public consultation is about to begin to improve the way the Parole Board explains its decisions to the public.

In a statement the Ministry of Justice said: “In traumatic and distressing cases like this, it is right that victims decide whether and how they want to be kept updated.

“Our priority is to support victims and it is right that we respect their decisions about how they are contacted,” the statement added.