Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Stephen Crabb

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to reduce reoffending.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

Reducing reoffending is a core mission of this Government. That is why, for example, we rolled out the genuinely transformational policy of 12 weeks’ guaranteed accommodation for offenders on release, and it is why we have invested heavily in employment; there are prison employment leads in every resettlement prison. The plan is working: the reoffending rate has fallen significantly since 2010, from 31% to 25%, and in the two years to March 2023, the proportion of prison leavers in employment six months after release more than doubled.

[Stephen Crabb]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his answer. He may be aware that the Welsh Affairs Committee has recently heard from businesses such as Timpson and Williams Homes about the work being done to train and recruit prisoners in Wales. While there was a lot of praise for the New Futures Network, which brokers partnerships between employers and prisons, what is being done to expand the number of release on temporary licence schemes? As we have heard, they are really important for improving employability and giving prisoners a better chance of holding down a job when they get out of the gate.

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the interest he is showing in this issue. He is absolutely right to pay tribute to the New Futures Network, which does exceptional work in custody. Of course, it is very often able to liaise with employment advisory boards—local business people in the area—to ensure that prisoners are trained in the skills that they need for jobs in that area. When I went to HMP Berwyn, which is of course in Wales, one of the things that I was so impressed by is that its employment hub has a video suite, so that prisoners can be interviewed by employers on the outside. On my right hon. Friend’s point about ROTL, that is something that prison governors keep under review. Certainly in the right cases, where ROTL is safe for the public, it can be a useful tool to ensure that prisoners are rehabilitated and get into work, so that they can be law-abiding citizens in the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alex Chalk and Stephen Crabb

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to improve access to child trust funds for parents of young adults with learning disabilities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

As a young person turns 18, the contents of their child trust fund belong to them and them alone, whether or not they have a learning disability, which is an important point of principle, but for those loving parents who, for good reason, want legal authority to access those funds, we want to make the process more cost-effective and more straightforward. As a result, fees can now be waived in appropriate cases and we have set up a working group to work quickly alongside the judiciary to review the process, with a view to streamlining it while maintaining vital safeguards.

[Stephen Crabb]

I thank the Minister for that answer, the work that he is doing on this issue and the letter he wrote to me this week about my constituents who are affected. As he knows, around 200,000 disabled children could be affected by this in the coming eight years, unable to access their Government-backed child trust fund, so I urge him to continue the good work that he is doing and to really make sure that applications to the Court of Protection are the least onerous possible for the parents of these disabled children.

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that issue on behalf of his constituents. He makes an incredibly important point. We have a duty to make sure that the rights of those individuals are maintained, but it is also important that, when there are loving parents and all they want to achieve is the best for their children, they are able to access that money in the interests of their children with the minimum of fuss, the minimum of bother and, frankly, the minimum of expense.

Brexit and Foreign Affairs

Debate between Alex Chalk and Stephen Crabb

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak so early in the debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins); I enjoyed listening to his speech and appreciate the spirit in which he made it. I think that many Members on both sides of the House will wish to return to the theme of working together pragmatically. It will certainly inform some of the remarks that I make in the next few minutes.

I have not taken many of the opportunities that we have had in this House over the past 12 months to speak about Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. In part that is because I had campaigned strongly for us to remain and on referendum day found myself part of the minority in the country, and certainly in my constituency, which voted strongly to leave. I have spent part of the past year trying to understand what drove that vote, not least in my constituency and across Wales, and how the debate is evolving. I have one or two observations to make.

First, I have been deeply impressed by the pragmatic and assiduous approach taken by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State over the past 10 months. I think that it has been appreciated on both sides of the House and, judging by what people on the continent tell me, deeply valued in the discussions with our European counterparts. Listening to his remarks today, and to those of the shadow Secretary of State, the newly right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), I was struck by the fluidity and room for manoeuvre that exists in both Front-Bench positions.

That fluidity might reflect different shades of opinion within the Government, and certainly within the Opposition, on how we should take forward the Brexit negotiations, but it also reflects a level of pragmatism. Listening to both Front Benchers this afternoon, I asked myself whether a pragmatic centre ground might be emerging around which Members on both sides could coalesce. One of the things I took from the general election campaign is that the country remains hopelessly divided on this issue. If we in this Chamber are to do anything over the next two years, it should be to provide some kind of leadership that helps bring the country together.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

No tariffs; frictionless trade; the best possible access to, but not membership of, the single market—is not the truth that there is vanishingly little difference between the strategic priorities of those on both Front Benches? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would help our constituents, and indeed our negotiators, if all parties were to make that clear?