Prison Suicides

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I well remember my noble friend when he stood at the Dispatch Box answering for Her Majesty’s Government on these matters. He offered us a great many thoughts that ought to be taken on board and he is right to stress the important fact that it would be better if people never went to prison in the first place.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will have gathered that the majority view in your Lordships’ House is that the Government’s response to a desperate situation will be too little, too late. I asked his noble and learned friend Lord Keen to write to me when he justified the reduction of more than 4,000 officers by saying that prisons had closed. I asked him which benchmarks were being used to assess the number of prison officers needed. It is clear that many in your Lordships’ House think that the Government are not justifying the meagre increase mitigating the effects of their massive cuts. Will suicides, overcrowding and the reduction in staffing and lack of access to training be part of the Government’s new benchmarks? I await the answer from the Minister’s noble and learned friend as to what is used to calculate staffing levels, and which are the miraculous new benchmarks that seem to be leading to chaos in our prisons for the foreseeable future.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I have not had the pleasure of seeing the noble Baroness’s letter to my noble and learned friend. I will certainly make sure that it is answered as soon as possible and will make a point of having a look at it myself—but I hope that she will accept that, having not seen it myself, I cannot yet respond to it in detail.