Prisons and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Garnier and Robert Neill

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

[Robert Neill]

I suspect that my hon. Friend will return to that topic as the Bill progresses, and there will be other opportunities for others to do so as well. In the course of our ongoing inquiries into prison reform, the Select Committee has taken some evidence on the difficulties in mental health provision. Practitioners from the Prison Service came to give evidence to us very recently. It is certainly a topic that we will return to and that others may well address, even in the course of this debate.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

My hon. Friend mentioned, correctly, the need for political will. However, if members of the public are asked, individually or on a more organised basis, what they think about the current state of our prisons and what needs to be done within our justice system, they are much more liberal than politicians give them credit for. We need to be braver and get on with this rather than allow ourselves to be pushed around by various disobliging organs of the media who want us to be more and more draconian in the way that we deal with prisons.

[Robert Neill]

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right, and he moves me neatly on to the next thing I was going to say. That political will does sometimes require us to stand up against the writers of the lurid headlines and those who pose as the voices of public opinion but in fact seek to be manipulators of it, and to say the truth—that it is in everybody’s interest that we reduce reoffending because the more we do so, the fewer victims of crime there are, and that is in everybody’s interest. That is a good right-of-centre, as well as left-of-centre, case for undertaking prison reform, and we should make it across the House.