Andrew Gwynne
Main Page: Andrew Gwynne (Labour (Co-op) - Gorton and Denton)Department Debates - View all Andrew Gwynne's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Vara
The action taken by barristers recently is very regrettable. It caused a lot of inconvenience to victims and witnesses. I just want to assure the legal profession that the door of the Secretary of State for Justice and my door are wide open, and we hope that we can engage in constructive dialogue.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
T8. Last autumn, Ministers said that no prisoners were being held in police cells, but figures show that there were 608 occasions on which prisoners were held in police cells between October and January. Will the Minister apologise?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)
No, because the hon. Gentleman is not correctly representing what we said. We said that Operation Safeguard was not in action, and that was true. He should understand that the use of police cells is routine—it was done under the previous Government—and occurs for a variety of reasons, some of which, for example, are down to courts finishing late and not being able to be get prisoners back to their home prison in time. Those things have happened under the previous Government and under this one. He might be interested to know that the use of prison cells last year was a little under 1,000; under his Government, it reached a peak of 50,000.