Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

There are no immediate proposals to change the release test. In March, there were 3,500 IPP prisoners serving beyond their tariff, a result of the administrative chaos that followed the unwise introduction of the sentence, with wholly unforeseen numbers being given such a sentence. I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that, in addition to the measures I have outlined, violent offender orders and sex offending prevention orders will be available to the courts to use for public protection.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the use of indeterminate sentences for prisoners who would otherwise have received relatively short sentences, far from enhancing public safety consumes resources in the prison system that are desperately needed for effective rehabilitation and stopping reoffending?

[Mr Blunt]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: such sentences consume substantial resources, not just in the offender management system but in the Parole Board and elsewhere. The prison system was having to manage a potential future disaster in the ever-increasing number of indeterminate sentence prisoners. We have finally got a grip on the problem and are now addressing it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I do not know the precise answer and suspect that it would be difficult to get the precise data to analyse the problem. There is such a problem, not least with sex offenders, who are often reluctant to engage with the system and often protest their innocence when they are not innocent. It is a problem to get such people to engage with offender behaviour programmes. The hon. Lady is right that there is a class of prisoner who does not engage in that way, rightly or wrongly, and who presents the system with particular problems. I will follow up that matter.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Presuming that, even under the prescription of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), most prisoners will eventually be released, is there not a danger that putting massive expenditure into an ever-increasing prison population would mean cutting expenditure to ensure that when people are released, they do not commit more crimes?

EU Criminal Policy

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

Yes, I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that that is the position.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Does the Minister recognise, when considering an opt-in or when seeking to establish whether there is genuine necessity, the importance of engaging with the relevant Select Committee at an early stage? The Select Committees, with their specialist knowledge of subjects such as agriculture and fisheries or home affairs, have an opportunity of ascertaining whether necessity has been established.

[Mr Blunt]

As a Justice Minister, I would be extremely unwise not to acknowledge the merits and wisdom of the recommendation of the Chairman of the Justice Committee. My right hon. Friend makes the proper point that there is an expertise in the Select Committees that should be engaged, if possible. Much of the process sits with the European Scrutiny Committee, and we are today making recommendations that the House should consider matters. I shall, of course, leave the detail of process, and the way in which the House should do that, to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. However, I hear what my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) says, and I acknowledge the force of his point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

No, Government policies are going to improve the probation service. If the hon. Gentleman looked at the probation budget, he would see that the position of probation has been substantially protected relative to the demands being placed on the overall budget of the Ministry of Justice.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

What is the Minister doing to make sure that probation officers’ work with prisoners is not undermined by prisoners being moved from prison to prison for no very good reason or for entirely administrative reasons?

[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.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I have instituted arrangements within the Department during this transitional period for the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board to come and see me regularly on a bilateral basis. That did not exist when I became the Minister with responsibility for youth justice, when accountability was through the chairman of the board. I think that we now have a much more satisfactory working practice—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) says that he does not really believe that. Well, I do believe it on the evidence of what has happened over the past 18 months. I will elaborate on that later in my remarks and tell him and the House why I have come to that conclusion.

The Justice Secretary recognises the need to strengthen the Ministry’s focus on youth justice by establishing a ministerial advisory group on youth justice. The group will provide timely advice to Ministers about delivery and the front line. That advice will inform the development of youth justice policy in the longer term. It will include advice on effective practice and what will work best to achieve the objectives that Ministers have set. The ministerial advisory group will be my key forum for providing external, expert oversight of operational youth justice practice to the Ministry of Justice. I will chair it as the Minister responsible for youth justice. It must consist of members who have expertise in the effective operation of the youth justice system; otherwise it will not be able to do the job that I need it to do and it will not have credibility with the informed youth justice lobby, which properly follows these matters with due care.

Finally, Dame Sue Street, a non-executive director at the Ministry of Justice, will take an active interest in youth justice within the Ministry. She has experience and knowledge of youth justice. Indeed, she undertook a review of the Youth Justice Board, but her remit did not include asking whether the Youth Justice Board should continue. Of course, as a non-executive member of the Ministry of Justice board, she will have a direct route to the permanent secretary and the Secretary of State. She is happy to take on those responsibilities as part of her role at the Department.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I want my hon. Friend to make it quite clear that he is not stepping back from his welcome indication that it will be possible for the advice that is given to Ministers by the advisory group to be probed by Parliament, and that its members will be able to come before the Justice Committee and tell us what their advice was.

[Mr Blunt]

I am happy to give my right hon. Friend that assurance. It would be quixotic to say now that it is advice to Ministers and that it will not be discoverable. The effectiveness of the group will depend first on the credibility of its members’ experience and expertise and, secondly, on whether its members are prepared to speak freely and openly on these issues. I anticipate that individuals, whether or not they are members of my advisory group, will be available to his Select Committee so that it, like me, is informed of their views.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Is the Minister aware that many victims greatly value the restorative justice process, because it brings the person who has caused them harm face to face with the harm that he has caused? Does the Minister recognise the need for it to be mainstreamed into the system rather more than it is at present? There are many areas in which it is currently not available to benches and courts.

[Mr Blunt]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is important to bear in mind that restorative justice is a right for victims. I believe that if, in the circumstances described by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), a victim wished to exercise the right to engage in restorative justice and to demand an account from an offender who was pleading guilty or had been found guilty, he or she should have the opportunity to do so. The victim impact statement, as part of the restorative justice process for the benefit of the victim, must become a much clearer element of our justice system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

That is not a result of our Government’s spending cuts. The efficiency savings for the probation trusts for next year are largely the plans that those trusts had for the transfer from board to trust status, which was inherited from the previous Administration. The National Offender Management Service is taking 37% out of its headquarters’ overhead precisely in order to protect the front-line professionals in the probation service in delivering effective offender management.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Are probation trusts going to be providers of services, commissioners of services or both? If both, is there a conflict of interest?

[Mr Blunt]

I know that I am going to give evidence to the right hon. Gentleman’s Committee and we will look forward to examining those issues. I suspect that the answer in the end is very likely to be both.

Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Blunt]

Well, I am grateful to receive support, wherever it comes from. I welcome the repentance of the Leader of the Opposition.

[Sir Alan Beith]

Now that we are having a more rational political debate about criminal justice policy, I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will do what they can—we will certainly do what we can—to encourage a more rational debate in some sections of the media. We found when we talked to people in other countries, including Germany and Finland, that the media in those countries did not present the arguments about crime in the way in which they are presented in some sections of the media here, where the argument is always that the sentence should have been longer. In other countries, the issue is debated much more responsibly.

[Mr Blunt]

If my right hon. Friend can find a way of pulling off that piece of alchemy, it would be extremely welcome. It would certainly be a very welcome development in intelligent policy making. As the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) said, this is a question not just of the Government changing the rhetoric but of Parliament addressing the issue, and now we are in a position to do so because in essence all three main parties are in the same place on going for evidence-based policy making. That is a welcome change from policy-based evidence making.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Beith and Crispin Blunt

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

12. What assessment he has made of the balance of expenditure between (a) prison building and (b) community sentences and restorative justice schemes.

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his unopposed re-election as Chair of the Justice Committee.

As I said in reply to earlier questions, our proposals for implementing the coalition agreement commitments on sentencing and rehabilitation will be presented after the House returns in October. Our future plans for, and the balance of expenditure between, custodial and community provision will need to be considered in the light of that, and restorative justice will feature strongly in that work, as will the work of the Justice Committee in its first report of 2009-10 on the case for justice reinvestment.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I thank the Under-Secretary for his kind words and congratulate him on taking office. Did he notice when he arrived at the Department that he was committed to a prison building programme, inherited from the previous Government, that cost more than £4 billion? It produced the highest incarceration rate in western Europe and pre-empted resources, which, if they were used to prevent crime, would save victims from suffering from crime in the first place.

[Mr Blunt]

My right hon. Friend will be glad to know that it did not entirely escape my attention. However, I draw his attention to the evidence that the then Justice Secretary gave to the Justice Committee in 2008. He pointed out that there was an opportunity to deliver the new prison places more cheaply on a revenue basis than the existing prison estate, and for them to be more fit for purpose in enabling the prison estate to address reoffending behaviour. The prison building programme per se is not, therefore, the problem but the number of offenders whom we have to sustain in custody. We need to examine the policies that drive those numbers.