Alex Cunningham
Main Page: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)Department Debates - View all Alex Cunningham's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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There is of course no procedural barrier to repeat questions, which many people regard as an example of dogged and insistent campaigning.
That was a really interesting answer, because the heroin dealer Ian Paul Manuel beat up prison officer Adam Jackson at Kirklevington prison in Stockton, and the courts gave him a conditional discharge and ordered him to pay £20 compensation to the officer. Does the Minister agree that such a slap on the wrist is totally inadequate, that it offers no deterrent at all to the thugs who turn on prison officers and that it is time the courts were given clear advice that they, too, have a responsibility to protect prison officers?
Absolutely: our prison officers do a very difficult and challenging job, and when they are assaulted or threatened at work, we should follow the course of the law to its full extent. To do that—[Interruption]—if the hon. Gentleman would listen—there are a number of things we need to get right, such as collecting evidence, making sure that the local police force is on hand to investigate the crime, and then getting the courts to prosecute it as they should. We are working to ensure that those procedures are followed, so that when a prison officer is assaulted in their line of work, the full force of the law is brought to bear on whoever the perpetrator is.