Prisons: Education

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the information he rightly seeks, but I will see if I can. Attendance at classes is an ongoing issue. It is sometimes due to staff shortages. We have introduced new KPIs for prison governors which include attendance, among other things, so I hope to see improvement in this area.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, would the Minister agree that a vital part of prison education is to help former offenders into gainful employment at the end of their sentence? A number of businesses such as Timpson, under the inimitable Sir John Timpson, have done pioneering work in this field to help prevent recidivism. What more can the Minister do with his department to encourage other firms to follow Timpson’s example?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend in paying tribute to Timpson. There are many other employers with which we are in close touch. The Prison Service has recently introduced prison employment advisory boards in all prisons and an employment innovation fund, and heads of education, skills and work will be established across the prison estate. This is all to improve post-prison employment, which is, I am glad to say, on the increase.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and I congratulate the two noble Baronesses on their superb maiden speeches, which were a delight to listen to.

I welcome the overall thrust of the Queen’s Speech, and I thought the Minister was extremely impressive in laying out for the House exactly what the programme entails. I want to concentrate on that part of the Speech that referenced Northern Ireland veterans. I would like to give it a cautious welcome, with some concerns. When I was in the other place, I was the founder of the all-party veterans’ support group, which has now become a full-scale APPG. I took a close interest in the Dennis Hutchings case, and I declare an interest because I have met him a number of times and know him well. As noble Lords will probably recall, Dennis Hutchings was serving in Northern Ireland in County Tyrone in 1974 and was part of a patrol that resulted in the killing of one John Pat Cunningham. The case was fully investigated at the time; there was absolutely no question of any of the soldiers on patrol being charged, and they were told to get on with their military careers.

















Fast-forward to 2010 and the Historical Enquiries Team, when these soldiers were investigated again, including Dennis Hutchings. He was told once again that there was no case to answer, that his case had been thoroughly investigated, and that he should get on with his retirement and enjoy the rest of his life. Eight years afterwards, in 2018, he was arrested in a dawn raid and has been charged with murder.

Obviously, that case is sub judice, but I can refer in detail to the Joe McCann case and the two members of the Parachute Regiment, Soldiers A and C. This case involved a notorious and wicked IRA killer. Soldiers A and C were charged with murder. The case was expected to last at least six weeks. As noble Lords will know, the case folded after a matter of days when the judge ruled that evidence gleaned from the original investigation and from the HET was not admissible. We now know that the former deputy head of the HET actually recommended that there should be no prosecution because no new evidence was available. Frankly, it is staggering that this case went ahead.

I am very concerned, because we are told that there are more than 200 cases in the pipeline involving veterans in Northern Ireland and that a number of them will go to prosecution quite soon. We know about the soldiers who have been charged as a consequence of involvement in the Bloody Sunday killings and the recent Ballymurphy inquest. I am concerned that no one has mentioned the impact on the lives of these soldiers and the fact that very few of these prosecutions will probably now have much chance of succeeding.

This leads me to the commitment in the Queen’s Speech on Northern Ireland veterans. The details are fairly sketchy, but HMG have made it clear that they are looking at some form of amnesty or truth and reconciliation commission. I am very nervous about this, because it would certainly imply at first instance some form of equivalence between soldiers and police officers doing their duty and those terrorists who had one sole aim in life: to go out there to maim and kill. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown, in his typically passionate way, pointed out that these soldiers and police officers had no alternative: they were doing their duty, whereas terrorists did have an option.

I suggest to the Minister that there is a way forward that does not involve new legislation. In future, the Attorney-General should sign off all future prosecutions. There should be an override for the UK AG in terms of national security, so that every single case, be it terrorists who killed or soldiers involved in killings, would have to be signed off by the Attorney-General. Victims would know that these cases would not go uninvestigated and soldiers, veterans and police officers would be able to sleep at night knowing that unless there was compelling new evidence they would not be prosecuted.

Future of Legal Aid

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)]

I think the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) has prompted an intervention.

[Ian C. Lucas]

I am grateful for the prompt from my hon. Friend; I was being a little cautious, compared with my colleagues. The dearth of advice in Wrexham, which is the largest town in north Wales, has a real impact. Even worse, until my last-minute intervention the Conservative-Independent coalition that runs the council was going to close our local citizens advice bureau. There is virtually no advice available. My constituency office has had to take on an extra caseworker to provide advice in the biggest town in north Wales.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The prisons Minister has set out a plan for 10 prisons that we are going to focus on. If the hon. Gentleman wants an explanation as to why we have chosen those specific 10 prisons, I am happy to meet him, and I know the prisons Minister would be happy to meet him. This is an area where we believe it is necessary to take action, and we have a plan to reduce violence in those prisons. If it works, we can look to extend it elsewhere. The fact is that we are gripping this issue. We are putting measures in place to address it, and we will deliver.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

8. What steps the Government are taking to prevent the use of mobile phones in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

There are basically four ways in which we can detect mobile telephones coming into prisons: we can get them at the gate, coming over the wall, in use on the landings and in the cells. We are addressing it in all those ways. We are increasing searching at the gates. We are putting up grilles and netting to stop phones coming over the walls. We are putting dedicated search teams into cells, and we are using equipment to detect phones in use.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. He obviously is aware that illegal mobile phones in cells are currently being used for drug trafficking, intimidating witnesses and other criminal activity. Can he make it 100% crystal clear that under no circumstances will he or the Secretary of State ever go down the route of allowing prisoners to have legal mobiles in their cells?

[Rory Stewart]

We are absolutely clear that a mobile telephone, and particularly a smartphone, in a prison is a form of weapon. It allows a prisoner to jump the prison walls, effectively; they can transfer money, record videos and intimidate witnesses. We are encouraging prisoners to continue to use regulated landlines in prisons to contact their families. We are investing in in-cell telephony, because keeping family relationships will reduce reoffending by 37%, but a mobile telephone is a weapon, and we will find them and remove them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

7. What steps the Government is taking to tackle the use of drones over prisons.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

18. What steps the Government are taking to tackle the use of drones over prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

Reducing the use of drones in prisons means four things: we must tackle the criminal gangs that organise the drones; we must tackle the people who fly them over the wall; we must ensure that we have electronic jamming equipment in place; and we need physical security in the forms of nets and grilles to prevent the prisoners from accessing those drones.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

You are right, Mr Speaker; it does sound a pretty rum business. The serious point about drones is that, rather than flying over my back garden in Penrith and The Border, they are bringing illicit substances into prisons. Of the four methods I emphasised, the key way of dealing with that—the one that is the most important of all—is physical security. If we have the right nets and grilles, it is simply impossible for the prisoner to put their hand out of the window and take the drugs off the drones. Of the four methods, perimeter security is probably the most important.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I thank the Minister for taking the issue suitably seriously. Is he aware of a particular issue in a number of prisons, including Wayland prison in Norfolk, where the drone flyers have been acting with impunity and have become ever more brazen in their conduct? Will the Minister tell the House how far he has got in implementing the measures he has mentioned? Is there not now an argument for a specific new offence of flying drones in that way?

[Rory Stewart]

We have made a lot of progress on the issue. In prisons such as Liverpool, where the new grilles are coming in, and Chelmsford, where we have the new protective equipment in place, we can see that it is more and more difficult to get a drone into a prison. When the nets are working and the grilles are up, it is difficult to do. There are other things we can do, too. One central thing is intelligence operations to identify organised criminal gangs. We are introducing sentences—in a recent case someone who flew a drone into a prison received a seven-year sentence.

Prison Officers: Working Conditions

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Rory Stewart]

It is 100% in the public interest to prosecute prisoners who assault prisoner officers. If they are not prosecuted, the authority of the state is undermined; it becomes almost impossible for prison officers to run a decent and human regime, very difficult for people to be unlocked from their cells and difficult to move people into education and purposeful activity.

If the education and purposeful activity and the decent and safe environment of the prisoner are not delivered, the prisoner is much more likely to reoffend when they leave that prison. That is a direct threat to public safety; therefore, as my hon. Friend implies, the Crown Prosecution Service must prosecute prisoners for attacking prison officers. We owe that to prison officers, but we also owe it to the public as a whole to have safe, clean and decent prisons. These are our prisons; in the end, prisoners are citizens who come out and reoffend on the streets. We have to restore discipline.

My hon. Friend spoke about drugs and the importation of mobile telephones. In the end, those issues can be dealt with. There are basically only five ways in which mobile telephones or drugs can get into a prison—after all, there is a fence around the prison. They can be thrown into the prison, flown into a prison, dragged into a prison, posted into a prison or carried into a prison. Every single one of these ways needs to be addressed.

We address the issue of people flying things into prisons by tackling drones; of people throwing things into prisons by the use of nets and proper yard searching; of people dragging things into prison by identifying the wire set-ups that run into prison windows; and of people posting things into prison—for example, a letter impregnated with Spice so it can be smoked can be photocopied. But we have not been good enough in England for nearly 40 years is searching humans going in and out of prisons.

Scotland is different. I venture to suggest that it is not a coincidence that the violence and drug rates have been lower in Scottish prisons and that there has been much more regular routine searching of people going in and out of Scottish prisons. I do not think that is an accident. I would be very interested in working with the Prison Service to pilot in 10 prisons increasing the security and routine searching at the gate, to see what would happen. But that will not be enough—many other things need to happen. At the core are people: the prison officers themselves.

There is no point in my standing here and pontificating about the Prison Service because there are more than 100 prisons. With the best will in the world, even if I visited two prisons a week, I would not be able to visit them all in a year. There are more than 20,000 prison officers and 84,000 prisoners. In the end, good prisons depend on good people. That is about recruiting, training and promoting the right kind of people and managing people in the right way.

How do we recruit the right kind of people? We search for exactly the values we are looking for. We train them by focusing on institutions such as Newbold Revel, the prison officer training college, to make sure people feel proud of being prison officers. I am very interested in reintroducing the passing out parade—getting families in to applaud people as they graduate from that training college, so that they feel they are extraordinary public servants, protecting our nation through their work. They need to feel that in their uniform, in their passing-out parade and in every day of their work.

We need to get the training right when people enter, and when people move into the custodial manager role. We need to think about how supervisory officers on the units, even if they do not have formal line management responsibilities, can mentor and drive those young, inexperienced staff. In many prisons, 60% to 65% of prison officers have been there for less than a year; we need supervisory officers to be able to work with them, to give them the confidence and the jailcraft to manage those prisons.

Then, we need to think about what happens at the governor level. How do we make sure that we do not end up in the situation that my hon. Friend found in a prison in his constituency, where there were four governors in five years? We need governors to stay longer in the prisons. We need them to be formally trained before they arrive in those prisons. One of the key determining features in trying to work out why one prison is performing well and another is not has to do with questions that are very difficult to put on paper. We sit here and look at staff numbers, drug levels and the age of the building, but the biggest constant is always the human factor: the culture of that prison and the prison officers, the nature of the leadership and management, the morale of the place and the way in which people work together.

This has been a really important debate. From our point of view in Parliament, we are very proud that there are three Bills on their way through the House of Commons that will help prison officers. One of them is doubling the maximum sentence for assaulting a prison officer. We have another Bill going through that will focus on new psychoactive substances and testing of drugs in prison. We have a third Bill going through the House that focuses on excluding mobile telephones from prisons.

Legislation on its own is not enough. It is about public understanding and support for one of the most unique, precious and impressive services that we have in the United Kingdom. That is why I believe that the proposal, made today by my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey and the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley, of a parliamentary scheme focused on telling Members of Parliament about the Prison Service will be an enormous help in getting legislators to understand how much our prisons matter to our society and, above all, understanding how much we owe our prison officers.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)]

I congratulate the Minister on an outstanding speech, made just from schematic light notes.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

No, we are making sure we have robust and rigorous regulation in place. The most important thing is to make sure that precious taxpayers’ money is put to the best use and that the debts are most effectively recovered.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

T8. Is the Secretary of State aware that there remains a serious illegal drugs problem in Norwich and Wayland prisons? Many Ministers talk about creating drugs-free prisons, but when is that going to become a reality in Norfolk? I would like the Secretary of State to answer, please.

[Mr Lidington]

Norwich prison, like all prisons in the system, is being challenged by new psychoactive substances, which are causing behavioural problems that add to potential aggression on the part of prisoners. These are being actively promoted by organised crime. We are addressing that, both by the provision of improved health and detoxification methods in prisons, and by active intelligence work to disrupt the supply of drugs into prisons, because rolling up those supply chains is what gives us the real opportunity to crack down on drugs.

Prisons and Courts Bill

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we have a programme to recruit 2,500 additional officers across the estate. I can confirm that we started in 10 of the most challenging prisons. We have now successfully secured the complement of officers in those first 10 prisons, which we said we would do by the end of March. We now have a record number of officers—over 700—in training. I do not deny it is a challenging task to recruit those officers, but as the right hon. Gentleman knows from his experience as prisons Minister, it is vital that we do that, because it is only by having qualified and skilled officers that we will help to turn people’s lives around.

I am not just interested in numbers; I am also interested in the career prospects and additional training that we give officers. That is why we are putting in an additional 2,000 senior officer posts across the country. Those will pay upward of £30,000, and they will reward officers who have additional training in areas such as mental health. As the right hon. Gentleman realises, it takes time to recruit and train those officers, but I am absolutely determined to do that, because, alongside these reforms, it is trained officers who will make the difference in our prisons.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I think I can help my right hon. Friend with an idea. About 15% of the prison population are foreign prisoners, and prisoners from places such as Albania, Jamaica, Somalia and Nigeria make up about 20% of them. Surely we can have arrangements whereby those prisoners are sent back to their own, friendly countries—including Commonwealth countries. The Department for International Development might help with the arrangements in those countries.

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am pleased to say that a record number of foreign offenders were sent back last year, but we are doing even more on this and making progress. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), is working very hard on it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Garnier]

Or the nearest prison to that Crown court.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

They end up in Norwich.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

They end up in Norwich having been via Maidstone, Lewes, somewhere on the Isle of Wight, somewhere in Dorset, somewhere in Devon, somewhere in Bristol, somewhere in the east midlands and somewhere in the west midlands. They eventually end up in Norwich, from where they are released miles away from their family without having had any contact with them. A prisoner’s medical records and education records do not follow them seamlessly.

I have uttered this plea time after time over the past 10 to 15 years and, no matter what party was in government, Ministers have told me, “What a perfectly sensible thing to say.” Unfortunately, because the politics is in sentencing, not prisoners, little is done about it. I hope that on this occasion, with this new Secretary of State for Justice, we will see an advance whereby it will not take another 65 years until we have a new prisons Bill to consider that question because we will not need such a Bill. I hope that in a few years we will see a reduction in prisoner numbers, an increase in reform and a reduction in reoffending levels, for the benefit of the public and the taxpayers whom my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and I want to protect, in terms of not only their pockets but their safety in their homes. I want an improvement to the advantage of us all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), an acknowledged expert on prison reform. What she said about HMP Parc was incredibly informative and moving, and I was really interested to hear what she said about Parc supporting families, as that could be rolled out in other prisons. I wish to declare an interest, as a former criminal barrister who both defended and prosecuted. I also wish to pay tribute to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State, my Norfolk neighbour, for the work she and her ministerial team have done in preparing for this Bill. They have been indefatigable in putting together a very impressive Bill, which appears, given what the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) said, to command a great deal of consensus.

On prisons, there obviously is a crisis, and a number of right hon. and hon. Members have alluded to it. I have a great deal of concern about it, because in the 12 months to December 2016 there were 25,000 prisoner assault incidents, which was a 31% increase on the previous year’s figure. Furthermore, there were 6,430 assaults on prison staff, of which 761 were serious. As we heard from the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), there were 37,750 self-harm incidents, and 354 prisoners died while in custody, with only 55% of those deaths due to natural causes. There is obviously a crisis. Although the number of prisoners who test positive for drugs has come down, which is encouraging, there has been a big increase in the use of new psychoactive substances. I am pleased that the Secretary of State is introducing, through the Bill, measures to bring NPSs under the existing testing powers; that is sensible. I also welcome the measures on mobile telephony, because there are far too many illegal mobile phones in prisons.

I recently went round Wayland prison in Mid Norfolk, and I was struck by the number of prisoners who are getting access to Spice and other NPSs. They are having a devastating effect on the management of prisons. The death of a prisoner in HMP Forest Bank on 29 January from a Spice overdose was the 16th death throughout the prison estate in that month. One prisoner who was recently released from Forest Bank said that half the prison is on the stuff, and the other half spend their whole day trying to keep away from those prisoners who are on the stuff. We have a real problem.

When I visited a particular prison—I shall not say which one it is because I do not want to embarrass the governor—the governor said he was keen to create a drugs-free wing. I find the lack of ambition incredible. Our prisons should be drug-free; it is as simple as that. How are the drugs getting in? The prisoners do not bring in drugs and I do not believe that visitors do so. They are coming over the wire on drones and perhaps in supply vehicles, and I am sorry to say it, but there may well be a small number of corrupt prison officers. A significant amount of drugs, particularly these new psychoactive substances, are getting into our prisons and causing a great deal of mayhem, misery and, in some cases, death. I urge the Secretary of State and her team to do all she can to keep up the pressure to make our prisons entirely drug-free.

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) that, in some ways, there are too many people in prisons. I think that not enough people who have done certain things wrong and have committed horrendous crimes are in prison, and they should be in prison for longer, but I also feel strongly that some people who are in prison should not be there. I am worried that there are more and more prisoners aged 50-plus, and there are currently many more prisoners aged over 65. As the Secretary of State conceded, that is partly because of the extra convictions for child abuse crimes. I certainly do not want to underestimate the seriousness of some of those crimes—no one can claim for one moment that they are victimless crimes, because they are not; there are victims of such crimes and the perpetrators need to be punished—but I agree with Chief Constable Simon Bailey of Norfolk constabulary, who is the Association of Chief Police Officers lead on this subject, that some people need help, not prison. There has been over-zealous prosecution of some of these people, who should be given help to wean them off their dreadful habits.

Several colleagues—including the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), my hon. Friends the Members for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and the good doctor, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter)—have mentioned the mentally ill in our prison estate. It is worrying that 4% of prisoners have a psychotic illness, 14% suffer a major depressive illness, and nearly two thirds have some form of personality disorder. I wish to make a suggestion to the Secretary of State as to how we could make some progress on this issue.

The alternative to prison for some people who suffer from serious mental ill health is to be found in the mental health treatment requirement. It can of course be added to a community or suspended sentence after a conviction, but it worries me that only 0.5% of community sentences in 2016 included an MHTR. Why is that? Perhaps the prisons Minister can look into that and elaborate further on it, because significant progress could be made on that front.

[Elizabeth Truss]

indicated assent.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

I am glad to see my neighbour the Secretary of State nodding.

I find it extremely worrying that of our prison population of 84,307—as at last week—just under 10,000 are foreign prisoners. I have not done the maths, but I think that is around 15% or 16%. Some of them are of course European, so there is a problem with ensuring that they are deported, because we have to have arrangements in place and that does not normally happen across Europe. There are, though, prisoners from countries including Albania, Jamaica, Pakistan, India, Somalia—unfortunately —and Nigeria. Roughly 3.5% of all foreign prisoners come from Nigeria, and a staggering 5.3% come from Jamaica. The prisons Minister and his team of officials really must try to do more to grip the problem. Why are better, reciprocal arrangements not in place? Why are we not working with the Jamaican and Nigerian Governments to, for example, use Department for International Development money to improve their prisons? Why are we not doing the same in Somalia? As far as I understand it, the new Government there have complete control of most of the urban areas and most of the prisons, so surely something could be done.

I shall conclude in a moment; I was going to say something about the courts, but a lot of colleagues are waiting to speak. I was keen to get the key points across, and additional points can be discussed in Committee and on Report. I find it heartening that the Bill commands a great deal of consensus among all parties and that, although the Government’s energy over the next few months—indeed, perhaps two years—is going to be focused on Brexit and all the challenging negotiations that will go with it, they still have time to stand true to their reforming zeal and introduce an important Bill. I congratulate the Secretary of State and her team. Let us hope that a really good Bill can be made better still in Committee.

Detention under Mental Health Act

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will break down the analysis for information not just on suicides, but on criminal assaults, which are often carried out on loved ones. When I was out on patrol with the Metropolitan police in Camden, we went to what the neighbours described as a “domestic situation”; in other words, someone had allegedly been assaulted. When we arrived at and eventually got into the flat, the one thing that the person who had been assaulted desperately did not want was for their loved one to be arrested and taken to a prison cell, because they were ill. They were ill in a similar way to someone who had broken their leg or who had a medical illness. They were ill and they needed to go to a suitable place of safety.

All too often over the years, that person would have been arrested and ended up in a police cell. If they were not subject to section 136, they would not necessarily have the safeguard of being seen by a medical or psychiatric specialist. That is one of the reasons why the amount of time that someone with a mental illness can be kept in a police cell is massively restricted by legislation.

I would argue that this is a matter not just for the police, but for social services and the NHS in particular. It is not for a police officer to diagnose instantly whether someone having a mental health episode is drunk, has taken illegal drugs, or has had their medication go wrong. I may not be the Minister with responsibility for the police as the reshuffle goes on, but at the moment they are my police officers in England and Wales, and very often they have to make split-second decisions. However, I am desperate to make sure that they are not put in the difficult position of being the first port of stoppage rather than being, as they should be, the last resort for those in desperate need.

When I was fireman, I regularly attended incidents with the local police force. At about a quarter to five on a Friday, social services would phone the police and fire stations to say that they were going home for the weekend, but they had not seen Mary or Jonny—vulnerable people—during the week, so could we make sure that they were okay. Sometimes we had to break into the premises. I argued then and I argue now that that is not the role of the emergency services, and it is certainly not the role of the police. However, that has become the norm in all our constituencies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley will be pleased to know that an inter-ministerial group is looking at this. When I was disabilities Minister, I sat on the group and argued my point about not just people with mental illnesses, but people with learning difficulties. The two are often confused in this area, because people with learning difficulties can also become very confused as we desperately try to look after them.

If someone has a mental illness, the place of safety that we take them to is not a police cell. We do exactly what it says on the tin and take them to a place of safety, which means a medical setting provided by the NHS or social services.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I support my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) in everything that he is trying to do. Does the Minister agree that the time limit in the safeguards in section 136, which require an examination by a registered medical practitioner or an interview by an approved medical health professional within 72 hours, could be reduced to perhaps 12 hours? That would mean that the person in question would get more immediate help.

[Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is exactly what will happen under the Policing and Crime Bill. The police will not be able to hold a person in a police cell for the length of time that they previously could while waiting for that medical examination to take place. However, to be honest, I think we can all agree that 12 hours is too long. Would we find it acceptable if someone with a broken leg had to wait in A&E for 72 hours? My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley is a qualified dentist. Would someone wait 72 hours if they had a huge abscess in their mouth that needed urgent treatment? Why is mental health treated so differently from other illnesses? That is something that my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) has been working on extensively, although sadly he has decided to return to the Back Benches. When the coalition was in power, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) accepted that the NHS was letting these people down, and that the men and women in our police forces were having to pick up the mess by dealing with those in desperate situations. That really is not the role of a police force.

Unless the Government come together to deal with this, my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley is right to be concerned about sections 136 and 135. I hope that he will take up my offer of our working together. I am sorry that I did not manage to be with him to meet the professor, although we did bump into him. If the concerns cannot be dealt with in the way that my officials and the three Departments that handle this suggest that they can, we will absolutely need to amend section 136, but let us first try to get to the right place. This will sound critical of other Departments, but I do not want the police to be seen, yet again, to be picking up something that another Department needs to address. That is what has happened over the years.

When I have said that we should restrict the length of time for which these very vulnerable people can be held in a police cell, one argument that has been put to me is: where will they go? How many specialist A&E facilities and places of safety are there, besides the cells in the local prison? The answer is that provision has to be made to ensure that the cells are not the first port of call.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

I am very surprised to hear that. We take prison officer training extremely seriously, but I shall look into what the hon. Gentleman has just told me as a matter of urgency. We are increasing the amount of time that prison officers spend being trained, and we continually improve the training we give them.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

7. How many days of sickness absence there were in his Department in (a) 2012, (b) 2013 and (c) 2014; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice (Caroline Dinenage)]

The average number of days lost to sickness absence in the Ministry of Justice was 9.8 in 2012 and 2013, and 10.2 in 2014. The Department is committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of its employees and reducing sickness absence.

[Mr Bellingham]

Obviously, those are disappointing figures. Is the Minister aware that last year’s figures were twice as bad as those in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and four times as bad as those in the Department for International Development? What will she, the Secretary of State and other Ministers do to improve morale and sort out this very disappointing situation?

[Caroline Dinenage]

A large proportion of Ministry of Justice roles involve front-line prison staff, whose working environment is, of course, more physically rigorous than those of staff with office-based roles. It is important to note that other Departments’ sickness numbers do not include front-line roles such as those of soldiers, police officers and, indeed, nurses. When we take into account only civil servants who are employed in Whitehall, we see that Ministry of Justice staff actually take fewer sick days than those in other Departments.