Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

T7. Will the Secretary of State update the House on how many Members of Parliament have had their telephone calls with prisoners recorded, and have all those MPs been informed?

[Chris Grayling]

I can confirm that all MPs who have had their calls listened to have indeed been informed. I can also inform the hon. Gentleman that I have now received an interim report from the chief inspector, which is being made available to Members of Parliament through the Library. The chief inspector’s interim findings are that there is no systemic problem and that the situation has improved substantially since 2012, but he recommends a number of other things we can do to improve the situation still further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I have a lot of sympathy with what my hon. Friend says. We are giving this issue careful consideration. I have had discussions both with my counterpart at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and with the Cabinet Office. The three Departments will continue to have discussions both with him and other Back Benchers with an interest in this issue, and with the BBC.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

T9. Last week, G4S repaid more than £100 million, after malpractice on its tagging contract. Should we be concerned that G4S has just bought itself a clean bill of health for future contracts?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

6. What progress he has made on investigating the reported misuse of public money by private contractors who hold contracts with his Department.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

We are in the process of auditing every contract that my Department holds with G4S and Serco. We will not be awarding the companies any new contracts unless or until those audits are completed to our satisfaction. We expect the audits to be completed later in the autumn.

[Nick Smith]

Why will the Minister not publish the PricewaterhouseCoopers report on the activities of G4S before any future Ministry of Justice contracts are awarded?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that these matters are currently being considered by the Serious Fraud Office. He will therefore understand that it would not be legally appropriate to publish items being considered by the SFO until it has completed its consideration.

Transforming Rehabilitation

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

This is an important issue that was raised with me this morning by the probation trust chairs. Of course, we provide a number of specialist accommodation blocks already. As part of the work we do over the next two or three months, we need to look at exactly how we ensure that the right vehicles are available to address accommodation needs. I want to see what I saw this morning at St Giles Trust, which has a small team of professionals who are very good at finding young people who are out of prison somewhere to live and stabilising their lives.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I want to press the Justice Secretary on something. On his watch, the Government have cancelled the probation service’s payment-by-results pilots before we have heard the evidence. Is not risk to the public increased when we do not have the results of those pilots?

[Chris Grayling]

I sat through a decade in opposition watching the previous Government so often piloting something, with nothing ever happening. The number of pilots that the Labour Government went through in office was endless. There is something in the work that is being done in Peterborough and the voluntary sector that I want to capture now, not in a decade’s time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

11. How many foreign national prisoners were repatriated to their home country to serve their custodial sentence in 2011.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

The simple answer is “Not nearly enough.” In 2011, 32 foreign national prisoners and one British national were sent to other countries to serve their sentences. The number of prisoners being repatriated is still unacceptably small, as it has been for a number of years under both Governments. I am not satisfied with that, and I am determined to push the numbers up, but the House should be aware that this is a difficult issue. We need the collaboration of other countries, and we are working hard to secure it.

[Nick Smith]

What a dismal record. Back in November 2010, the Prime Minister said that he would “personally” lead a new drive to remove foreign prisoners. Given that the number repatriated in 2011 was just a third of the number in Labour’s last year in government, is this not yet another illustration of a Prime Minister who over-promises but under-delivers?

[Chris Grayling]

I will not take any lectures from a party that was responsible for the levels of immigration to this country that we have seen over the past decade. There are now fewer foreign nationals in our prisons than was the case under Labour. I intend to continue the drive both to deport people when they have finished their sentences, and to deport them through prisoner transfer agreements as soon as we possibly can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I assure my hon. Friend that I will do that. I do not believe that any ministerial team or Department has a monopoly of wisdom, and we will look for best practice and good ideas that will help us to deliver a better level of support to offenders so that they do not come back and reoffend. I particularly look forward to working with members of the Justice Committee. They will no doubt scrutinise our actions intensely, and I hope that we can have a constructive relationship.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Further to his earlier answer, how will the Justice Secretary fill the £130 million black hole in the National Offender Management Service budget that has been highlighted today?

[Chris Grayling]

As I have said, I will not give a detailed accounting statement today, but I have looked at spending trends in the Department and I am satisfied that we are on course to meet our goals for the spending review period.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am pleased to say that there are 80,000 fewer people on out-of-work benefits today than there were at the time of the general election. It is worth the Opposition noting that as regards youth unemployment, when we take into account all the policy changes that have taken place, and if we strip out the ways in which the previous Government hid people and kept them off the unemployment register, youth unemployment is down as well.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

T3. A constituent has contacted me about a Work programme placement that is both unsupervised and offers no training. Is not the Minister worried that Work programme providers, such as A4e, deem that satisfactory?

[Chris Grayling]

If the Work programme providers do not deliver the right support, they will not be successful and they will not be paid. That is the joy of the system that we have put in place. The previous Government put hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds up front into the pockets of providers. We make the providers put their own money up front in a commitment to deliver support to the long-term unemployed, get them into work and help them stay there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Lord Grayling

Monday 28th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

14. What steps he is taking to tackle youth unemployment.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

The measures that we announced on Friday build on the support that we have in place. There will be more intensive support for all 18 to 24-year-olds, including through the doubling of the work experience and sector-based work academy schemes. There will also be a wage incentive for any young person under the age of 24 who is placed in long-term employment, usually in the private sector, through the Work programme.

[Nick Smith]

In Blaenau Gwent, there has been a 70% rise in young people who have been on the dole for more than six months. The Government now acknowledge that high long-term youth unemployment is a slow-burning social disaster. How many of their private sector, subsidised work places for young people will be delivered in Wales next year?

[Chris Grayling]

Let us deal head-on with the issue of an increase in long-term youth unemployment. The only reason that the figures for long-term youth unemployment show an increase is that we no longer hide young unemployed people on Government schemes and training allowances, which created a totally misleading figure. The reality is that long-term youth unemployment on a like-for-like basis is now almost identical to what it was two years ago under the previous Administration. Every single young unemployed person in Blaenau Gwent will have access to a work experience placement through our work experience scheme or to the Work programme, through which they will receive a wage subsidy for any employer who takes them on and gives them a long-term job.