Prison Officers Association: Protest Action

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend clearly has much experience in this area and what he says is absolutely right. The prisons and probation ombudsman described psychoactive substances a game changer in our prison estate, and they are one of the reasons why we face the current situation. We rolled out testing in September, and we have trained 300 sniffer dogs to detect those substances. That will have an impact, and we are already beginning to see it in some of our prisons.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Lord Chancellor should perhaps bear in mind that questions of what is and is not legal are to be determined by the courts, not by Ministers and not by this House. I say to her gently that she cannot praise prison officers in one breath and then condemn them for being reckless in the next without trying to achieve some understanding of how things have reached this point. If she really wants the POA to come back to the negotiating table, might she think about the tone she adopts in dealing with this dispute, so that it might have some confidence that if it does return, it will be listened to?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I respectfully say to the right hon. Gentleman that I have had a number of meetings with the POA and discussed issues of safety, on which I share its concerns. I am absolutely not attacking the hard-working prison officers on our frontline, but it is a mistake for the POA to call for unlawful industrial action in the middle of talks. I urge it instead to come back to the negotiating table, because that is how we will get a safer environment for our prison officers to work in; we will not get that through unlawful industrial action.