Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Adam Afriyie]

I will not keep the Committee too long. I just want to say that I have sat on many Committees in my 19 years here, and I think that this Committee is a testament to the strength of Parliament in scrutinising legislation that clearly we all want to see. It highlights the nuances of differing views on constitution versus freedom of speech versus public interest, so I very much understand the reason for each one of these amendments.

There is a lot of debate around each amendment, but I suspect that actually the Government and pretty much every MP would agree with the intention of all of them. The question is about the precision of how they are delivered. I rise, to be honest, to speak in support of all the amendments in this grouping—not necessarily the precision of them, but the intention behind each and every one. In particular, I speak in favour of amendments 11 and 12, which stand in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden.

It does seem to me that as MPs, we see all sides of this issue. We see attacks on ourselves from people trying to suppress what we are about to say on the Floor of the House or elsewhere, but we also observe in our local media that the two little journalists stuck in a local regional newspaper are suddenly facing a massive court case if they write something that, to be honest, is in the public interest and fairly innocuous. We can see things from both sides, which is why, particularly in the debate about these amendments, we are all being very gentle in how we approach things: because we know that there are subtleties that we need to address.

However, I am very keen to see that those who have disproportionate power—whether that is financial power, or in business structures, or in access to lawyers—are kept in check when it comes to behaviours that are clearly designed to harass, intimidate, frustrate and frighten people on the receiving end, whether they are local journalists or media, or even, to be honest, mainstream newspapers that may have financial challenges as well, or individuals such as our former colleague Charlotte Leslie, whose life was made an absolute misery. Nobody in any party would want to see or witness that kind of behaviour, no matter which former MP was experiencing it.

This issue needs to be dealt with and I thank the Government for dealing with it. I also thank all hon. Members on this Committee for examining what needs to change. I am very keen on this group of amendments, because they aim to clarify and define more closely what it is we are trying to deal with. The worst kind of legislation is the kind that we have not scrutinised carefully to ensure that when a judge approaches a matter, they have clear directions and a clear understanding of the intention of this House in forming that legislation.

I hope that in Committee and on Report, we will finally get to a resolution on each of the issues that have been raised here, because it is really important that this piece of legislation gets on to the statute books. However, it is equally important that freedom of speech is defended and that the little guy or the little girl in our society—the small media outlets—are protected from deeply wealthy and deeply aggressive litigants.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Elliott. I can be fairly brief, as harmony appears to have broken out across the Committee. I would not want to disturb that harmony in any way.

[Sir David Davis]

Go on!

[Andy Slaughter]

Well, just a little, maybe.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly on his Bill and particularly on his amendments. They not only clarify the Bill but strengthen it a great deal, especially in relation to the objective test, which, as we discussed at some length on Second Reading, is a necessary change. Without the amendments, the danger is that one of the vices that the Bill seeks to prevent would become apparent in another way—through satellite or preliminary litigation—because we were trying to delve down into what was in the mind of a claimant in the process of bringing a suit. That is a good start.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden mentioned pre-litigation risks about actual harassment of defendants and other ways of manipulating the court processes. I find amendment 12, which he tabled, attractive from that point of view. It certainly is the case, and libel cases are the best example, that whole swathes of defendants’ lives can be taken up simply by the manipulation of the litigation process.

Above all, and most commonly, this is an issue about costs. We can all imagine what Tom Burgis, Catherine Belton and Charlotte Leslie felt when they received those letters. It is not just about the allegations or the possible reputational damage; it is about the real risk of bankruptcy, or at least having to pay out huge sums of money. It is just common sense that that is bound to suppress free expression and hobble investigative journalism. If the Bill goes some way towards preventing what is commonly described as the chilling effect of such litigation, it will be doing an extremely good job.

It is also true that the use of the justice system to pursue SLAPP claims undermines the rule of law and undermines confidence in the judiciary. There is a question as to whether courts have been manipulated. They have stuck to the rules and dealt with the law as it is, but have been unable to do much about claimants who bring cases for malicious and devious purposes. I often agree with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North; I do not agree as often with the Government or the Ministry of Justice, so that is a great pleasure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer]

The challenges facing crematoriums, and in fact the whole funeral sector, are being reviewed by the Law Commission. This is about not just crematoriums, but burial space. There are challenges across the whole death management landscape, to use the technical term, which is why the Law Commission is investigating and bringing forward proposals.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The fees for civil legal aid are half what they were in 1996 and the number of providers has fallen by 40% in the past 10 years. If the Minister actually wants to do something about civil legal aid, why has he kicked the civil legal aid review into the long grass?

[Mike Freer]

Legal aid is always under constant review and I will always take advice from those closest to it. That is why I engage with, for example, the Bar Association, the Law Society and the judiciary on what we need to do. As for kicking things into the long grass, all I can say is that I want to get this right and if that takes time, it will take time.

Prisons and Probation: Foreign National Offenders

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend makes an exceptional point. We have to proceed on the basis of evidence, not emotion. We choose to lock up the most dangerous offenders for longer, which is why those who murder in the context of sexual or sadistic behaviour should be in custody for the rest of their lives, because the threat to the population is so great. Where people can be reformed using technology, which was not available a long time ago, we should use that, not just because that works as a matter of common sense but because the data shows that it works.

On my hon. Friend’s specific point, anyone who looks at this issue calmly and in an adult way will see that there have been pressures in moments in history. There was one in 1997 and another in 2007, when Jack Straw had a terrible argument with Lord Falconer about the use of cells in Inner London Crown court. Those of us who have been in the system remember that. The key is whether to deal with that in a sensible, calibrated and proportionate way. We will take every step to look after the safety of the public, and we will not score political points in the process.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Last week, the Prisons Minister and I visited Wormwood Scrubs, where we found doubling up in single cells, with unshielded toilets, and overcrowding affecting people’s time out of cell and access to work. The education service was described as poor, and food budgets are £2.70 a day. Staff told us that assaults on officers are not being prosecuted. What is the Lord Chancellor doing to improve conditions in our Victorian prisons, as that is vital for the welfare of staff, the rehabilitation of prisoners and the protection of the public?

[Alex Chalk]

First, I commend the hon. Gentleman for visiting his local prison, as doing so is extremely valuable and I am grateful for his feedback. He raised a number of issues and I would be happy to write to him, but may I just deal with one thing in particular? We ask prison officers to do an extremely difficult job; they need to be robust, but sometimes they have to be sensitive. To assist them in doing so, we are ensuring, first, that they are paid properly, and so we accept every last penny of the Prison Service pay review body recommendation. Secondly, we are rolling out body-worn video, so that they know that if a situation looks like it is escalating, the evidence will be there—that provides a powerful deterrent effect. Thirdly, and finally, we are reducing attrition. I hope he will agree that experienced prison officers are the ones who can make those tough decisions on when to be tough and when, metaphorically speaking, to offer that hand of support.

Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate, particularly with you in the Chair, Mr Speaker. This is essentially a debate about free speech, which I know is of great concern to you not only in this Chamber but outside it. It is also of particular concern to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), and I congratulate him on bringing the Bill forward. He is quite busy with his other hat on, as the shadow Minister for the Middle East, so it is good that he has time to be here on a Friday to promote his Bill. I hope he has the Government’s support.

I would say that this became a live issue for the House when the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) held his January 2022 debate on lawfare and the UK court system; as with everything American, the terms “SLAPPs” has taken over the language here, but lawfare is effectively the same thing. On that day, which was really the issue’s first run-out, I replied for the Opposition. There were many strong contributions, and the debate put the issue on the map, including on the Government’s map.

Let us give the Government a little bit of credit, although not too much; there has been some progress. We have heard about what is in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, dealing with the issue of SLAPPs, but in a particular way and for a particular type of offence—that is, around economic crime—and the anti-SLAPPs taskforce also meets, but it is somewhat disappointing that the Government have not brought forward their own comprehensive legislation on the issue. I hope they will use the agency of my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly to get something on the books in the time available in this Parliament. Nevertheless, we have not done the entire job. That is no criticism at all of my hon. Friend, and I do not know whether that is an invitation for me to be on the Bill Committee as well.

I will deal with three points that need slightly further attention. The first, which my hon. Friend mentioned, is the issue of SLAPPs taking place in the dark—pre-issue, as it were. There has been some attention by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to that in issuing guidelines, but there is still quite a strong feeling that many SLAPPs were effective long before getting to the courtroom because of the intimidation—which we should not underemphasise—placed on individuals. They may be authors or journalists, but they may just be individual members of the public. The intimidation may even be of corporations, and yet they cannot take the risk because they are up against people with not just deep, but bottomless, pockets. We heard about the £1.5 million cost for Catherine Belton in relation to “Putin’s People”. That was pocket money for Abramovich, but for a publisher—let alone a journalist—it is a significant sum of money. A more comprehensive view of how SLAPPs act is important in relation to resources.

I do not want to disagree with my hon. Friend, but we need to look at the point that the Anti-SLAPP Coalition and the NUJ have raised—and the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord)—about a subjective or objective test. That is not easy. Obviously, there are subjective as well as objective tests throughout the legal system. Nevertheless, there is a real fear that the need for a defendant to show subjective elements will be a path for the claimant to tie proceedings up in knots, complicate things and drag them out. I do not know what the solution is, but we should at least explore that and listen to the expert organisations, particularly the National Union of Journalists and the Anti-SLAPP Coalition, which are urging us to take that course.

[Richard Foord]

Does the hon. Member think that a minor amendment could be introduced to add an objective test based on observable features of abuse, to help prevent litigation from being misused to suppress freedom of speech?

[Andy Slaughter]

It sounds like the hon. Member wants to be on the Bill Committee and is drafting his amendments in his head. I have never known a private Member’s Bill Committee to be so popular. I am not a legal draftsman and I do not know the answer to his question, but we need to bottom out this issue, because it seems to be attracting the most attention.

Other issues have been raised about overlaps with the Defamation Act, and costs. There are provisions on costs in the Bill, but it is about whether they are driving down costs as far as they can, and about public interest. A number of areas could be further explored, even in this short Bill. Costs are a vital but often neglected part of the legal process. This is a hobby-horse of mine. We have just discussed the Media Bill in the House, and the repeal of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which in effect takes Leveson part 1 out of the equation with regard to having a level playing field for victims of press abuse—if I can put it that way.

On SLAPPs, the Government appear to support legislation such as this to prevent costs being used as a weapon to prevent people getting their just deserts and their day in court, but there is a different situation when it comes to the media itself—I cannot for the life of me see the difference. Of course, Leveson cuts both ways; Leveson also provided a formula for protecting small publishers against exactly the sort of people who take part in SLAPPs—indeed, he could have used the word “SLAPPs” in his report. It also protects the innocent victims of press abuse because the press magnates—not journalists and small publishers but major publishers—also have bottomless pockets.

In his response or during the passage of the Bill, could the Minister think again, at the very least, about how the Government will approach the issue of small publishers and journalists being sued in order to protect the so-called privacy—often the nefarious activities—of very wealthy individuals and corporations. This can affect anyone, including journalists like Tom Burgis, who won his case. The experience did not discourage him, because next week I am hoping to go to the launch of his latest book, “Cuckooland: Where the Rich Own the Truth”. Let me give him a little plug—it will soon be available from all good bookshops. It takes huge courage for someone to risk everything simply in the course of prosecuting their employment, when there is the risk of bankruptcy or being dropped by their publisher—although that was not at risk, I have to say, in Tom’s case.

We heard about the case of Charlotte Leslie, a former colleague of ours, who was effectively persecuted through the courts. We are lucky; we have the protection of privilege here. However, when we step outside this place, we can become a victim in that way, just like anybody else who is, with good intent, simply trying to tell the truth.

This even affects organisations such as the Serious Fraud Office, which is still being prosecuted through the courts by the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation. The Serious Fraud Office launched the action in good faith, and there was what I would call retaliatory SLAPP action. Although the original action by the SFO has been discontinued, the SLAPP continues. It really does look like a topsy-turvy world when organisations that we should rely on to regulate society—in which I include investigative journalists, Members of Parliament, and certainly criminal investigation organisations—themselves become the victims of those they wish to call out.

That is why we urgently need a much more comprehensive approach to SLAPPs, and that is why I fully welcome the Bill and will support it today. However, I think we can do more work on this. In responding today, I hope the Government will express their strong support and their desire to go further.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his excellent work in successfully championing the limit on Friday prison releases. The changes for which he called came into force last November and are exceptionally helpful, and he deserves great credit for that. He is also right to point to the brilliant work of Switchback, which has supported our resettlement work. That work includes the roll-out of 12 weeks’ guaranteed accommodation and the introduction of resettlement passports, which contain precisely the basic information to which my hon. Friend referred, such as a prisoner’s name, date of birth, national insurance number and release date. They help prisoners to access essential services such as housing and healthcare, and contribute to the driving down of reoffending, which, as was recognised by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), is significantly lower than it was in 2010.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The wife of a remand prisoner at Wormwood Scrubs wrote to me recently to say that the prison is so cold that prisoners are shaking, that they have to choose between work, social time and showering, and that the food is lacking in basic nutrition. I can explore these matters with the Prisons Minister in a couple of weeks’ time during our joint visit to the Scrubs, but does the Secretary of State agree that such conditions are not conducive to rehabilitation?

[Alex Chalk]

This is an important point. We do deprive people of liberty and sometimes we have to do so in the case of those on remand, but the conditions must be safe, decent and humane—austere, yes, but humane as well. I commend the hon. Gentleman for going to see the Scrubs with the Prisons Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), and I shall be very interested to hear his views thereafter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman raises an absolutely essential point. As I indicated, we are quadrupling funding for victims’ services on 2010 levels. Part of that is directed through police and crime commissioners to procure and commission precisely the kind of support he has indicated. What I am also able to say is that in those tragic cases that result in a fatality, the Homicide Service is now better resourced to provide ongoing support. That may be physical support, but it may also, sadly, be the mental support that is desperately needed.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the prison estate for the rehabilitation of prisoners.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

In December last year we completed an estate-wide programme of surveys to assess the condition of each public sector prison, and I look forward to seeing the findings of those surveys. By the end of the current spending review period we will have invested nearly £4 billion towards the delivery of an additional 20,000 modern prison places to ensure that the right conditions are in place for the rehabilitation of prisoners, and in the last full financial year we spent more than £200 million on maintenance and upgrades—alongside, of course, our continued investment in purposeful activity within the prison estate.

[Andy Slaughter]

I was delighted to receive an invitation from the Minister’s colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon), to join him on a visit to Wormwood Scrubs Prison in my constituency this Thursday, but less delighted when the invitation was withdrawn yesterday on the basis that it had been “issued in error”. Had I been permitted to attend, I would have raised the subject of the letter sent to the Lord Chancellor on 7 December by 10 chairs of independent monitoring boards for London area prisons, including Wormwood Scrubs, which stated that

“prisons are overcrowded, not safe and most of those in prison do not lead a ‘useful’ life”.

In the absence of a reply to that letter, can the Prisons Minister tell us how he intends to make prisons fit for rehabilitation, given that, according to trade union sources, there is a maintenance backlog amounting to £3 billion?

[Edward Argar]

If the hon. Gentleman would like to visit the Scrubs with me—and I am not issuing this one in error—I shall be happy to accompany him on a visit to his local prison.

As I have said, we continue to invest in our prison estate. We also continue to invest in increasing the number of prison officers—to whom I pay tribute for the work that they do day in, day out; I suspect that those on the Opposition Front Bench would join me in that—and to invest in purposeful activity. The efforts that we have put in across the estate are working, as is shown by the proportion of prison leavers who are in employment six months after their release, which has more than doubled in the two years to March 2023. I look forward to discussing this further with the hon. Gentleman in his local prison.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Chalk]

That is precisely the point, and my hon. Friend has put his finger on it. Of course, we would not want to stray into the normal lane of the judiciary; we have huge respect for our independent judiciary, who do an exceptionally good job of ensuring that there is fairness on the facts before them. As I have said, the case is wholly unprecedented, and we will want to have exhausted all alternatives before taking radical action.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Spending on housing legal aid has fallen by more than half in the past decade, from £44 million to £20 million. Is this a proper response to growing insecurity, overcrowding and poor conditions in the housing market, or might it be a contributing factor?

[Mike Freer]

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that just last year we invested an extra £10 million in housing legal aid, so I think we are addressing the issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mike Freer]

As my right hon. Friend will appreciate, I cannot comment on individual cases, but I can reassure her that the payment of wasted or unreasonable costs can already be ordered by the tribunal if it considers it appropriate. Given the issue that she has raised, however, I would be more than happy to meet her to ensure that her concerns are conveyed firmly to those responsible for the reviews.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

T2.   Eight courts have so far been named as containing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—RAAC—and three of them are closed. The Government will not say which prisons are affected, but will they guarantee that funding for RAAC removal will not come at the expense of existing maintenance schemes, given the huge backlog of repairs in courts and prisons?

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman is right about the eight court buildings, but that is in the context of an estate of over 300 buildings. It is important to note, however, that we have massively increased the budget for the court estate, and that enables us to do two things. First, we can take on more projects and also plan them because we have guaranteed this over two years, meaning that we can plan in a more efficient and effective way. The second issue so far as prisons are concerned is that separate considerations apply because the buildings are used for a whole range of different purposes; there is the prison itself, but there are plenty of ancillary buildings. This is all being inspected in the normal way, and the budget is certainly there to effect remediations if required.

Prison Capacity

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we want to ensure that all prisoners, and certainly young men, are steered away from crime. We now have a much better understanding, as a nation, of some of the drivers of some offending. That is why, under our watch, when prisoners come into jail there will be a neurodiversity assessment to explore their background. We could potentially discover a brain injury—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) has gone, but I know that he takes an interest in that subject. The whole approach we are now taking is to ensure that those who can be redeemed are redeemed, but that those who are frankly beyond redemption and are a threat to society are locked up, and locked up for longer. That is the right approach.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

In a parallel Government universe, the Secretary of State’s proposals for directing short-term prisoners into community sentences might be an idea whose time had come, but it requires experienced probation staff in post, properly organised and challenging community work, and genuine rehabilitation initiatives. His Government’s evisceration of the justice system means that none of that is available, and he is doing it now only because of their mismanagement of the about-to-burst prison estate. Has he not been set up to fail?

[Alex Chalk]

No, that is wrong. The first part—that this is an idea whose time has come—is correct. I spoke about this when I was a Back Bencher in a speech at the Conservative party conference, of all places. I have come to this as a realisation for some time. What is encouraging is that the Government are putting enormous additional resource into the probation service, because I reckon that it is ultimately critical to the success of community orders; it does a phenomenal job. We are putting more resources in and recruiting more, and we will do everything we can to strengthen the system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Going to where the job opportunities are is incredibly important; I would mention to her opportunities such as the Jobcentre Plus railcard through the Department for Work and Pensions. We also need to make sure that, at the point of release, prisoners are put in touch with opportunities near to where they live—where they are going to. Although we work with employers large and small, there is a particular value in working with multi-site firms that have locations in many different places.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

There have been seven deaths in Wormwood Scrubs prison as a result of self-harm in the past three years. The first of the inquests into those deaths—that of Luke Clarke—was concluded only last month. It found that inadequate care, fear and confusion contributed to Luke’s death. What is the Ministry of Justice doing to prevent the unacceptable level of self-inflicted and avoidable deaths in prison and what is it doing to speed up the inquest process? I am still waiting for the meeting into the inquest process that I was promised on 27 June by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer).

[Damian Hinds]

We were talking about employment on release, but what the hon. Gentleman raises is incredibly important. I have visited Wormwood Scrubs. Rates of self-harm are unacceptably high. They vary by place. In the women’s estate, we have a particular issue with self-harm. We are working closely with the national health service, which provides mental health support in prisons. I am absolutely determined that we bring down levels of self-harm.

His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill]

I could not agree more. The current Lord Chancellor has said previously that prison is there for the people of whom we are entitled to be afraid, not for the people with whom we are annoyed or angry. That is an important distinction, because prison is there to deal with those who are a danger to society or who have significantly harmed society; it is not there, in an ideal world, to deal with people who, for any number of reasons, have got their life into a mess. Such people can be a nuisance to society, but there is surely a better way to handle them than incarceration in the closed estate at a cost of some £40,000 a year.

The Justice Committee held an inquiry into the prison population back in 2017. There was about a 15% reduction in the prisons budget between 2015 and 2020, and it was found that had an impact on the safety and decency of the estate, following a reduction in the number of prison officers between 2010 and 2015. In truth, there has been underinvestment in prisons and, I would argue, underinvestment in the whole justice system for decades, under Governments of all complexions. Because the Ministry of Justice is both an unprotected Department, in budgetary terms, and a downstream Department, it often picks up the consequences of things that have gone wrong elsewhere in society and elsewhere in Government. The Ministry of Justice is particularly vulnerable.

In 2017 we saw there had been a 20% increase in the prison population over 15 years, and future projections indicated growth to 2022. There was, at that time, a transformation programme committed to expanding the prison estate by 10,000 places and to closing outdated prisons. Sadly, the truth is that the programme was not fully delivered. The Public Accounts Committee reported that just 206 places were delivered by the programme.

In 2018 the Ministry of Justice decided not to deliver the prison estate transformation in full because of budgetary pressures. Around 6,500 places were removed from the programme, but nothing has been done to reduce demand. Indeed, a number of changes to sentencing policy have, in fact, increased demand in a number of areas.

The 2017 inquiry found clear evidence that the reduction of spending in prisons had had a major destabilising effect. Reducing staff numbers put more pressure on remaining staff, and the way in which facilities management services were outsourced through block contracts meant the operation was very remote and very unresponsive to the day-to-day needs in prisons. It was very frustrating for governors, who were frequently finding that it took months to get basic repairs done. The nature of the contract was seriously at fault. I do not have a problem with contracting out in the right circumstances, but the way it was done was extremely inefficient.

Six years on, the Prison Service faces largely the same issues. The population has continued to increase, there is still an issue with the recruitment and retention of staff, and the estate still has capacity pressures. There was another prison expansion programme in 2019, and the “Prisons Strategy” White Paper said the provision of prison places would make a “more modern and secure” estate.

There was an ambitious target of 20,000 additional prison places as part of that programme, but we now know that planning permission has not been granted for three prisons—either it has been refused or no decision has been made—and the Ministry of Justice is having to appeal those planning decisions. That is hardly joined-up government. Surely the risk of delays in planning should have been foreseen at the outset.

On behalf of the Committee, I wrote to the permanent secretary at the MOJ following the publication of its main estimates, and I am grateful to her for responding yesterday. Disappointingly, only 8,200 new prison places will have been created and made operational by May 2025. We are about 11,800 short of the Government’s target of 20,000 by the mid-2020s. Given that background, is the Minister convinced that the current prison expansion programme is genuinely deliverable? When are we going to get to the 20,000 places? What steps are being taken to speed up a rate of delivery that, so far, will not get us there?

Prisons in England and Wales are reaching breaking point; the growth in the adult male population has forced the Government to use police cells to accommodate prisoners, through Operation Safeguard. The Government have said that would be in place for no longer than is necessary, but how much longer does the Minister anticipate that will be? How frequently is Operation Safeguard being used?

I mentioned the changes to sentencing policy, which have put more pressure on prisons. For example, we have seen changes to magistrates’ sentencing powers; there was an increase to two years and then, suddenly, a temporary reduction back down to one year. That is not good lawmaking, and it is not fair or just sentencing policy to have a lottery whereby when a defendant appears before the court decides whether he is dealt with by the magistrates or committed to the Crown court. As we all know, that move was done not because magistrates sentence more heavily—there was no evidence to suggest that—but because if people are sent to the Crown court for sentence, as the magistrates deem their powers insufficient, it will take longer before they end up in prison. There is a bit of sleight of hand here, as that was done to ease out the demand in the prison system, pushing people’s arrival in prison back down the road a bit, in the hope that somebody else will have left by then and so a bit more space is available.

That is not the right approach and it puts more pressure on another part of the MOJ’s responsibility, the Crown courts, because more cases are then being sent to them when they could have been dealt with more quickly by the magistrates. The Government need to address that situation. What is going to be done to deal with it? How long does the MOJ envisage this reduction in sentencing powers lasting? What is being done to consult the judiciary on whether that is a proper approach to the use of judicial resources and sentencing policy? I know that there has been a temporary response in respect of rapid deployment cells, which may offer some support. It may be of some assistance, but what is the long-term plan? How long do we envisage those cells being in use? What is the plan eventually to integrate them with the rest of the estate?

We have the plans for the 20,000 prison places, but the delay is significant. That means there is significant overcrowding in the estate, which is the second point I want to address. The overcrowding is such that it is difficult for prison staff to carry out rehabilitative work, which is one of the objectives of prison. That feeds into that high rate of recidivism and reoffending that I have referred to. It also creates real challenges on our basic duties of care towards both prisoners and prison officers. When the state removes someone’s liberty for the broader public good, it has the duty to commit to keep them safe and in decent conditions.

Equally, the state has a duty to provide decent, safe and reasonable working environments for those who supervise the prisoners and run the prisons. I fear that in a number of our prisons we are simply not getting there at the moment. We are simply failing in that, and repeated reports from His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons have flagged that up. The growth in the number of urgent notifications that have been issued by the inspector to the MOJ is also evidence of that. I appreciate that the Minister has always responded promptly to those urgent notification procedures, and I am grateful to him for that, but it speaks to an underlying problem that needs to be resolved. I suspect that that can be done only through sustained investment and by thinking about whether we are using the alternatives to prison effectively. To go back to the point made by the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), we need to make sure that we use it for those who are dangerous, where there is no other safe means of dealing with them and we cannot use cheaper and often more effective rehabilitative alternatives.

We still have many Victorian prisons—the “local prisons”, as they are often called—some of which are in a very poor state. They have been described as “not fit for purpose” and “dilapidated”. There has been historical under-investment in maintenance and we have a backlog of maintenance work in the prisons. In March 2021 this was estimated to be about £1 billion-worth. His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service is regularly taking prison cells out of use because of their state of disrepair. In the decade between 2009-10 and 2019-20, some 1,730 prison cells were permanently out of use for failing to meet the required standards. The lack of money going into basic maintenance therefore adds to the capacity crisis.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Chair of the Justice Committee is making an excellent critique of the system. There is something ironic about prisons being so undermaintained and needing £1 billion spent on them, such that their accommodation is not available, when some £4 billion is being spent on new prisons at the same time. It looks as if we are just forgetting the ones that we have, particularly the remand and the local prisons.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I have a lot of sympathy with that point. The irony is that the chief inspector of prisons, in his 2021 annual report, describes some of those old prisons as

“cold, dark and shabby cells…often plagued by damp and cockroaches, leaking pipes and toilets, and broken or missing furniture and windows”

but, at the same time, as we have already observed, the new prison building schedule is way behind and, because of the planning situation, so far we have no assurance about when those spaces will be delivered. In any event, they will not replace the dilapidated prisons, as we had originally hoped, but will simply increase capacity, because we have a tap that nobody seems able to find the means of properly turning off, in terms of those coming into the system.

The original plan was to close old prisons as part of the prison estate transformation programme, but that has not happened. In 2019 the Minister’s predecessor said that they would need to be kept open. Well, how long do we expect to keep those prisons open? What is the long-term plan for those prisons? What is the plan to ensure that the risks in relation to planning permissions and restrictive covenants, which plagued the potential redevelopment of Holloway, for example, are recognised and sorted out well in advance of the commitment of the capital?

It is worth observing that we have had an increase in the capital departmental expenditure limits for prisons, which is welcome, but if we are spending only a fraction of it so far—as I recall it is about £4 billion, and we have spent about £1.6 billion so far—clearly we have resource being allocated by the Treasury that we cannot have confidence that the Ministry is able to spend and use to deliver in a timely fashion. What steps is the Minister taking to deal with that? What reassurance can he give us? What is the plan to speed up that programme and get the resource spent where it is needed?

The other issue I want to deal with is the operational workforce—as I said, the Committee is currently running an inquiry on that. I pay tribute to the men and women who work in our prisons. They do a very tough job, which probably no one in this House would want to do. They do it on behalf of society, frequently in difficult and unpleasant conditions—sometimes unacceptable conditions—and at some risk to themselves. They deserve to have the recognition that I do not think they always get. On behalf of the Justice Committee, I recognise and salute them for what they do, but we need more than just recognition and warm words; we need some real support for them.

As part of the inquiry, the Justice Committee undertook a survey of serving prison officers. Some 6,582 staff responded to it, which was a decent number. The responses were striking. We found that half of band 3 to band 5 staff do not feel safe at the prison they work in. Feeling safe at work is surely a basic right for anyone. Half is a frightening statistic. Reports from the inspector and the independent monitoring boards have highlighted the growing number of assaults, both on staff by prisoners and between prisoners. That is a result of the cramped, overcrowded and stressful conditions in which many prisoners are held, so perhaps it is no surprise that the prison officers feel so concerned about that.

Band 3 to band 5 and band 2 are the key operational grades—the frontline people who do jobs on the wings. Only 15% of band 2 operational staff felt they had proper, regular training; 25% of band 3 to band 5 staff said they had regular training. That means the majority of staff do not think that they have such training. Surely training people is a basic part of making sure that we professionalise and keep the workforce up to scratch? We are bringing in various protective equipment for them; they need to be trained to use it.

It is no surprise that morale is low. More than 70% of staff in band 2 and 80% of staff in bands 3 to 5 said that staff morale was not good at the prison in which they worked. If that is the position with the frontline staff, is it any wonder that we have a problem not just with recruitment, but with retention? It is clear that there is a real issue with experienced officers leaving the service. When things get difficult in prison, when those tensions threaten to boil over, and when there is potential dispute or violence on the wings, it is exactly those experienced officers—the old hands, the men and women who have been around the system—who know how to deal with sometimes quite damaged and challenging individuals. Their experience is more necessary than anyone’s to calm things down and to prevent things from escalating. Therefore, unless we have a proper strategy for retention, we are creating a potential powder keg for the future.

Ultimately, we have both to retain and to increase the number of staff. Unless we do that, we will not get the purposeful activity that is necessary to make prisons beneficial; otherwise we end up just warehousing individuals with no benefit at the end of it. That pressure on staffing and overcrowding in prisons is reflected in the concern of the president of the Prison Governors Association, Andrea Albutt, who said that the prison system faces an immediate crisis and could run out of prison places as early as mid-July. What is the Minister’s assessment of that? Does he agree with the president of the Prison Governors Association that, in a few days’ time, we could run out of space? If so, we are in a very grave situation indeed.

What, too, about the observations of the Shannon Trust—I am very grateful for its information—pointing out that statistics from the Office of National Statistics, HM Prison and Probation Service and the voluntary sector suggest that some 62% of all those incarcerated have a literacy level lower than an average 11-year-old? Given that we have some 85,000 people in prison, that potentially equates to about 53,000 people who have real literacy deficits. Without that being put right, what is their hope of getting a job on release? How do we then get them out of that cycle of reoffending? Because it is so difficult to carry out education activities in those cramped and inadequate facilities and to attract staff to do the tough job of education work in prisons, all too frequently, the level of courses is not being delivered in the way that was intended. What will the Minister do to increase the amount of education and purposeful activity that we see in our prisons? We all say that it is the objective, but so far we are not delivering on it in any consistent manner.

Let me look beyond prison to the critical issue of probation, which is sometimes, I fear, regarded as the poor relation of the two. The bulk of the budget goes on prisons because of the very high fixed costs, but probation is essential and we should pay tribute, too, to the probation officers who work so hard. It is essential to give alternatives to prison in the first place and, secondly, to have a proper means of transitioning prisoners back into society when they are released, without the risk of reoffending.

When we carried out our inquiries, we found high staff vacancies, overloaded probation practitioners working overcapacity, poor staff retention and inaccurate risk assessments, all of which were flagged up by the chief inspector of probation, who said that many services are experiencing exceptional staff shortages, with half the positions at key grades in some areas being unfilled. It is no wonder, therefore, that things are being missed. That is a risk not only to prisoners, but, potentially in the worst case, to the public as well. What is being done to deal with staff pressures in the probation service?

We met many probation officers. They want to improve their service, but they need decent and sustained funding to do so. You cannot have it being switched on and off like a light switch. We know that three fifths of the HMPPS’s expenditure is on prisons. We need to concentrate on and not forget the other two fifths of the budget as well.

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[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow that forensic speech by the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). He took us through many of the problems, particularly those in the Prison Service. I will be rather more selective about the issues I speak about, but I will concentrate in particular on prison conditions.

Three weeks ago, I visited Wormwood Scrubs prison in my constituency. It is a prison that I have visited on and off for the past 30 years as an MP, a councillor and a criminal barrister. Despite meeting many dedicated officers and determined governors, I have never changed my mind about it being an unsuitable institution in the 21st century, particularly for the rehabilitation, or indeed the punishment, of offenders. On my most recent visit, I saw that many of the men were sharing one-person cells with unshielded toilets, making their living conditions cramped and unpleasant with no privacy. In addition, the Scrubs, like many prisons, is still operating a 23-hour lock-up regime, in which some prisoners get only one hour a day outside their cells. Is it any wonder, then, that self-harm and poor mental health are at a high across the prison estate?

I recently asked a series of written questions of the Minister’s Department, mainly on the topic of time out of cell. The MOJ responded that it does not hold those statistics centrally and that it was not practical for it to record the data. How does the MOJ hope to have an overview of the wellbeing of the prison population in its care if it does not know what each prison’s time-out-of-cell regime is? I followed up to inquire about why the MOJ does not collect that data centrally, and I was provided yesterday with a response that said that the MOJ would need to record data for each prisoner individually, based on his or her movements each day, to understand time out of cell for each prison. If I may say so, that is a ridiculous response and the Minister has misunderstood the question—not intentionally, I hope.

To get an understanding of each prison’s time-out-of-cell regime, the MOJ need only ask each prison to report that data to it. As the data is about the time out of cell rather than the individual schedules of prisoners, it will be much simpler to collect than the Ministry pretends. [Interruption.] The Minister is chuntering from a sedentary position. I am sure that he will, when he responds, deal with that point in more detail.

A couple of weeks ago at Justice questions, I also asked about the overcrowded conditions in prisons. That data is held and published by the Government, but I do not think it is an accurate representation of what is and is not an overcrowded prison. For example, when I visited Wormwood Scrubs, the governor told me that she had just been asked by the MOJ to increase operational capacity. How will we ever know if a prison is overcrowded if the MOJ keeps moving the goalposts of operational capacity? If the MOJ keeps asking prisons to increase operational capacity, overcrowding will become an even bigger problem, as well as something of a hidden one.

Prisons are overcrowded, single cells are being used to house two people, and most time-out-of-cell regimes are oppressively restrictive. What necessitates much of that is an insufficient number of staff on the wings. Prisons need more staff, but they cannot hire more staff if their budget does not allow it. Prison officers are leaving the profession in their droves, and it is not hard to see why. It is a very dangerous job; prison officers are at very real risk of physical injury. It is also emotionally taxing seeing prisoners at some of the lowest points in their lives, and getting very little assistance by way of productive work, education and other support. The pay does not do the job justice, and is proof that the MOJ has insufficient regard for the profession. It wastes thousands of pounds training new prison officers who then leave within the first two years due to the conditions. It is clear that something is going very wrong, and the Government need to fix the problem.

[Conor McGinn]

As well as prison officers, will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to prison chaplains, particularly at his local prison of Wormwood Scrubs, where Father Gerry McFlynn was the chaplain for a long time? He is now the director of the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas; my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) will know him. Father Gerry celebrated his golden jubilee just last week—he is 50 years an ordained priest, and has dedicated his whole life to prisons and prison chaplaincy. I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in sending his regards to Father Gerry, as will all Members.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am very glad to have taken that intervention. I agree that prison chaplains, prison priests, prison vicars and prison imams—we have an excellent imam at the Scrubs—are in many ways unsung heroes, doing a fantastic job alongside the other staff.

I am afraid that often the problem is the MOJ itself, which is seemingly always one of the first Government Departments to offer itself up as soon as the Chancellor of the day mentions cuts. I think its budget is now 12% lower than it was in 2010. If prisons do not have the staff to unlock the prison safely for a reasonable period of time, do not have the money to provide meaningful activities and do not have the resources to provide good-quality education, mental health declines, and that can have tragic consequences for prisoners and staff.

I will come back to the issue of education in a moment, but I will briefly mention mental wellbeing in prisons. I recently met a lawyer who has been representing four bereaved families of prisoners from Wormwood Scrubs who took their own lives. Between April 2020 and February this year, there have been seven self-inflicted deaths at the Scrubs. The pain for the families must be unimaginable, and I am sure that other prisoners and the staff who found the deceased are also struggling. Any self-harm death in a prison is a potentially preventable one that deserves a rapid response to work out what went wrong and to implement learning for the future, but not one of those cases has yet made it to an inquest. An inquest for one of the families is scheduled for August this year, but that is over three years of waiting for answers.

We rightly talk a lot about the court backlog, but maybe not enough attention is paid to the coroner’s court backlog. According to coroner statistics for 2022, the average time from the date of death to the conclusion of an inquest is 30 weeks, but it is a postcode lottery; I think the worst case was at North Lincolnshire and Grimsby, where the wait was 72 weeks. One of the important outcomes of inquests is often the prevention of future deaths report. If an institution such as Wormwood Scrubs is waiting over three years for an inquest into the death of a prisoner and there is crucial learning that a coroner could uncover, how can that prison be expected to make the necessary changes? When the coroner does provide recommendations in their prevention of future deaths report, how do we know that public bodies will implement them?

I recently spoke on a panel for a campaign launched by the charity Inquest, which is asking the Government to implement a national oversight mechanism. The mechanism would collate recommendations from inquests and prevention of future deaths reports, along with the public body response, in a database. It would then analyse these responses, and produce a report. Finally, the mechanism could allow a follow-up procedure to check on the progress of implementing changes arising from the original recommendations. This sounds like a sensible and not expensive approach, and one that could help to lower the number of preventable deaths, if recommendations became centralised and easy to follow up. I am grateful that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), has offered to meet me and Inquest to discuss this, and I hope to hear from him soon. I realise that deaths in custody and deaths in prison are only one part of the equation, but they are an extremely important part.

I want to finish by coming back to education in prisons, In my recent meeting with the governor at Wormwood Scrubs, she explained that individual prisons have little control over their education services. The MOJ employs education providers in the Prison Service, but the quality of these providers can vary greatly from prison to prison. The governor says that she is unable to change the provider, because it has a contract with the MOJ for a number of prisons. That is only one example, but I think it is typical of the disconnect and neglect that is apparent.

I mentioned local and remand prisons. These are often the oldest, Victorian prisons and those in the worst condition. The Government boast—I am not sure why—that they are on this massive prison expansion programme and putting huge sums of money into new prisons. However, that is not to renew the prison estate, but because of the increase in population. I urge the Minister to look at the way that some of our older prisons are being run. They do a disservice not only to the people who work there and run them, as well as of course to the inmates, but to the wider community, because people are not being rehabilitated and are coming out of prison insufficiently supported and going back into prison very quickly. That is a recipe for disaster not only for the individual but for society as a whole, and it is an indictment of the failure of the prison system under this Government.

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[Damian Hinds]

Of course, I will be delighted to correspond in that way with my hon. Friend.

We are also rolling out 1,000 rapid deployment cells across the estate. The first three sites, HMPs Norwich, Wymott and Hollesley Bay, are now accepting prisoners, and the majority of the 1,000 additional places will be delivered this year. We are undertaking major refurbishments at sites including HMPs Birmingham, Liverpool and Norwich, delivering about 800 cells between them. The wing-by-wing refurbishment at HMP Liverpool will see every cell renovated. Construction has also started on new house blocks at HMPs Stocken, Hatfield, Sudbury and Rye Hill, which will add around 850 places between them. HMP Millsike, the new prison of some 1,500 places by HMP Full Sutton, will open in 2025. Our new prisons have a laser-sharp focus on rehabilitation, with workshops and cutting-edge technology that puts education, training and jobs front and centre, so every prisoner gets the right opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

Like many, or most, workforces, the Prison Service has experienced recruitment and retention challenges at a time of very low unemployment. Ensuring our services are sufficiently resourced and that we retain levels of experience are fundamental for delivering quality outcomes. That is why we are targeting the drivers of staff attrition and taking steps to improve recruitment, alongside a wider agenda of development in the workforce.

We welcome the Justice Committee’s important inquiry into the prison operational workforce and we have worked closely with the Committee to provide evidence. We are now closely considering the survey of prison staff, and I reaffirm that we take the issues of the morale and safety of staff with the greatest gravity. Prison staff do incredible work and, so often, are the hidden heroes of our justice system and society. In every prison I have visited, their dedication and drive are clear to see.

We fund a range of services to support staff wellbeing, which include care teams in public sector prisons that are trained to provide support to any member of staff involved in an incident at work. We are committed to making sure our prison staff feel safe, supported and valued, and we look forward to receiving the Committee’s full report and recommendations in due course.

The 2022-23 prison staff pay award was announced in July 2022. It represented a significant investment in the workforce. Alongside an increase in base pay of at least 4% for all staff between bands 2 and 11, we targeted further pay rises for our lowest-paid staff of up to £3,000.

The probation service is in its second year of a multi-year pay deal for staff. Salary values of all pay bands will increase each year, targeted at key operational grades to improve what has been a challenging recruitment and retention position. The pay increases differ for different job roles, but to provide an example, probation officers will see their starting salary rise from around £30,200 in 2021-22 to a little over £35,000 by 2024-25.

Let me respond briefly to some of the individual points made by colleagues during the debate. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) asked about crowding in prisons. The most recent statistics show crowding at 20.6% in the estate; by way of comparison, in 2009, that figure was 25.3%.

My near neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), raised the horrific crime of overkill. I have heard what she says and I will pass on those points within the Department.

I commend the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for his close association and work with the Prison Officers Association. I confirm that I will continue to look forward to speaking with the Prison Officers Association and other staff bodies throughout the Prison and Probation Service. He was right to identify the centrality of safety and security in people’s experience of work. I reassure him that we measure those things centrally through the key performance indicators that we have in prisons.

Multiple Members rightly talked about rehabilitation. Specifically on the question about education providers asked by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, it is true that there are four education providers contracted to provide education services through the prison system. However, there is also a flexible fund that enables individual governors to draw down funds to make supplementary provision in certain ways. It is important that we get a blend—that we are able to respond to local conditions and the specifics of a prison population, and have some commonality in the provision and in the qualification studies.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Damian Hinds]

I am sorry, but I think that I might be starting to stretch Mr Deputy Speaker’s patience. I will be happy to follow up with the hon. Gentleman separately if he would like to do so as an alternative.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North talked, quite rightly, about the impact on families. That works in both directions—the effect on the children and what can be an adverse childhood experience, and the effect on the prisoner. Then there is the importance of having family time and family support, and the difference that that can make on release. I pay tribute to Lord Farmer for the work that he has done in that area. We have done some work on improving the maintenance of family ties, but I bring here today the good news that we are working on some data-linking in order to understand the extent and nature of these issues more closely.

We know overall that the efforts of our dedicated staff are working. The proportion of prison leavers in employment six months after release has more than doubled in the two years to March 2023, from 14% to more than 30%. Since 2010, the overall reoffending rate has decreased from 31.6% to 24.4%. As of February 2023, our transitional accommodation service had supported more than 5,000 prison leavers who would otherwise have been homeless across the initial five regions. Of course, there is still a huge amount more to do, but it is clear that we are making significant and important progress. The Government will always value and invest in His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. Our prisons must be and will be a safe place in which to work, where staff are provided with the right support, the training and the tools to empower them to do their jobs. I look forward to a continued dialogue on this matter with the Committee and others beyond this debate and the report.

In closing, let me repeat my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst for securing the debate, and to all who have contributed today. I commend the estimates to the House.