Prisons

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Crispin Blunt

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), another member of the club of exes. When I held the responsibilities that are now held by the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Sam Gyimah), the right hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well which bits of the system were difficult to change, and I remember being regularly twitted by him about the impossibility of being able to transfer the necessary number of foreign national offenders out of the system. His regular interrogation on how we were doing on the numbers showed his expertise and understanding of the system. I am delighted with the work that he is doing on the Justice Committee and with his contribution to this debate. I hope that my reflections on the system, as another of the exes, will also make a positive contribution today.

I am delighted that my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey, is now the prisons Minister. In my experience, he has been open to talking to people with experience of the system, to getting ideas and to getting well across his brief. He is to be congratulated on that. He is lucky enough to be serving under the present Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, who has the qualities that my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) had. My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath and the current Lord Chancellor put policy back into the place where it had been left by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), under whom I had the honour to serve. The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) said that the change of policy between 2012 and the arrival of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath as Lord Chancellor had created significant difficulties for the prison service. I know that the policy during that period will have found some favour with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but we are now dealing with the consequences.

The Prison Officers Association is not innocent in this matter. The priority for my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) was to deliver the savings targets that the Ministry of Justice had to meet, and they were significant. He was presented with a deal by the Prison Officers Association: if he ended the competition programme for the potential privatisation of prisons—a programme started by the Labour party—and the wings were left in the control of the public sector, the POA would agree to the establishment changes in the public sector bid to try to hold on to the management of Birmingham prison. Those involved savage cuts to the establishment. Indeed, the winning bid for HMP Birmingham by G4S involved about 150 more staff than the public sector bid.

The second round of cuts, which were put into the service after 2012-13 and implemented during the course of 2013-14, involved severe establishment reductions in the prison service, all in the public sector. My hon. Friend the Minister is now having to wrestle with the consequences of that. The Government have now woken up to those consequences and are putting 2,500 prison officers back into the establishment. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) had to deal with the consequences of the previous policy when he was prisons Minister, and immensely difficult it was, too.

The message that I want to give to my hon. Friend the Minister involves the possible role of the private sector, and I want to try to win this argument across the House. The problem under my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell was the row with Serco and G4S over the management of the tagging contracts. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, it resulted in those companies—the biggest suppliers of private sector services in the custodial system—not being considered for contracts. That meant that we lost a serious amount of competition; indeed, the whole competition programme was stopped.

The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) referred to Doncaster prison, which is run by Serco. When I went to see it as prisons Minister, it was a quite outstanding prison. Serco had engaged with the Department, and its contract to manage the prison incentivised it to deliver the necessary rehabilitation. There is no right or wrong answer on public or private sector involvement, but the big advantage of private sector prisons is that they are cheaper to run and cost the service less. The companies also invest heavily in leadership in those prisons. In my experience, the most innovative practices and regimes, particularly around rehabilitation and the management of offenders, were in the private sector. I know that the reforms in the White Paper will try to give some of those freedoms to the governors of public sector prisons, and I wish my hon. Friend the Minister all power to his elbow in achieving that.

There are two ways in which to get resources into the custodial estate, and that process has to be done in partnership with the private sector. First, we need to change and improve the estate, which means continuing the process of selling off the old prisons—they are expensive to run and often occupy expensive real estate—and building new ones. Those new prisons should be built and operated by the private sector. We can take the savings there. If the money is not available in the public sector budget just now, at least the private sector will give us the ability to deal with the funding over a prolonged period.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What about Oakwood?

[Crispin Blunt]

The former shadow spokeswoman asks about Oakwood prison. The cost of a place there was £13,000 a year, compared with an average cost of £22,000 per place in a more expensive prison.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

The National Grid scheme is a good example of good practice and Mary Harris, who is the lead force behind it, has very properly been honoured for her contribution. National Grid has been running the scheme for some time and getting a large number of other businesses engaged. The scheme is extremely important for the resettlement of offenders. Equally, it needs to sit alongside our proposals for work in prisons, all of which will assist in the rehabilitation of offenders with, we hope, the scale of success that the National Grid scheme has seen.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is no longer in his place and that is a shame, as he and I have rather a lot in common. For example, we both used to work for Asda, where we were told that the quality of a department can be judged on how it performs when the boss is away. Today, we have had at least five elegantly given “Don’t knows” from Ministers. Let us see whether Minister can answer this: does he know, and can he explain, why a written answer from his Department shows that almost 20% fewer inmates completed drug treatment courses in prisons last year than did so two years ago?

[Mr Blunt]

Of course, drug treatment programmes are the responsibility of the Department of Health. As one would expect from a mature Department, I will—[Interruption.] No, I do not know the precise answer to the question, so I will write to the hon. Lady with a precise answer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

We are trying to give the notion of prison clusters much greater prominence. The right hon. Gentleman will have seen that the OLASS—Offender Learning and Skills Service—review presages a situation in which prison clusters would procure education and skills training, and that should reflect the prisoner journey. We want to have a prison estate that is not under the enormous pressure it is under now—due to the terrible situation we inherited—so that we can get prisoner journeys from local prisons through to resettlement prisons, while both getting support from offender management and delivering programmes.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Justice Ministers give every impression of treating their Department as a policy adventure playground in which constant experiments in rhetoric lead to predictable U-turns and confusion. The probation service supervises some of the most dangerous individuals in our community and uncertainty now grows in this service, too, as the Minister decides whether to privatise all probation functions or just some of them. Does he consider any probation service functions, such as court reports, to be unsuitable for privatisation?

[Mr Blunt]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady will have to contain her impatience until we make a comprehensive statement—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) intervenes from a sedentary position, but a proper statement will be made to this House early in the new year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There will be substantial benefits from bringing this policy to scale, which I am optimistic we can do. There will be benefits to victims from the resources generated by the work that prisoners do; to the taxpayer from relieving the cost of the regime; and to the stability of the prison regime, as she mentioned. However, there will also be a substantial rehabilitative benefit to prisoners who will leave prison with a CV that includes skills training in the work in which they have been involved as well as experience in the work itself.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

We all agree that prison industry is good for rehabilitation, but how many additional prison officers does the Minister think will be needed to supervise movement around the estate and to ensure that prison industries are secure and properly delivered?

[Mr Blunt]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. If we are to change prisons from being simply places of security and of warehousing people, where work is wedged in when possible, there will be additional costs to the prison regime. The businesses that go into prisons will have to generate the resources to support that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I fear that I will not be able to explain the whole network without irritating you, Mr Speaker, but the Ministry of Justice has funded 44 separate projects in conjunction with the Corston independent funders. I have already answered the question about what will happen to the funding after March. We will continue a degree of funding—not on the scale that has happened before, but we are identifying the projects that are working best, which we will wish to continue to support.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

12. What assessment he has made of the effects on public protection of releasing those with indeterminate prison sentences who have completed their minimum tariff.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Chapman of Darlington and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Seventeen-year-old Ashleigh Hall, who lived in my constituency, was murdered last year by Peter Chapman, who is now serving a life sentence. While in prison, Mr Chapman has been writing to Ashleigh Hall’s parents and family. Does the Minister think that that is acceptable?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing that to my attention. Perhaps she could write to me with the details of the case. Obviously, on the face of it, it sounds unacceptable, and I would be pleased to look into the matter.